


Baby, we´re a natural disaster

by ThatOneGirlBehindYou



Series: We wanted freedom to choose, now we have to fight for it. [1]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alpha Natasha Romanov, Alpha Tony Stark, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Anal Sex, Arranged Marriage, Blow Jobs, Clint Barton & Loki Friendship, F/M, FrostIron - Freeform, M/M, Marriage, Mpreg, Multi, Omega Clint Barton, Omega Loki, References to Knotting, Rimming, Romance, Science Bros, Superhusbands, domestic frostiron, natasha romanov & loki friendship, not really thorki
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-17
Updated: 2013-09-15
Packaged: 2017-12-20 11:13:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 46,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/886587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatOneGirlBehindYou/pseuds/ThatOneGirlBehindYou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As he lies awake in bed, he tells himself it´s not really his fault.<br/>Loki is hot, single, intelligent and an asshole; of course he likes him.<br/>He´s also engaged and his friend´s brother.<br/>Oh, and then there´s the fact that he´s got a boyfriend himself.<br/>Tony contemplates suffocating himself to death with his pillow as he concludes there´s a special place in hell for people like him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Rumor has it

**1**

**Rumor has it**

A heat.

Someone´s going into heat. It´s painfully obvious with the way the scent filters even through the science facility´s special airways.

Tony sniffs a bit, vaguely interested.

If he´s to be honest (and he isn´t, he´s made sure no one ever expects the truth from him) the only Omega he´s ever seen through a heat had been Pepper.

Not that anyone truly believes her to be an Omega, with that confident, taking-none-of-your-shit attitude, but Tony knows there´s only one redheaded female Alpha in the campus, and he counts himself lucky to never having gotten it up with her. If there´s anyone who deserves to be called a Black Widow, that´s Natasha.

Whatever, hallway gossip has always been a constant in Tony´s life, just like that time it had prophesized he wouldn´t last long with Pepper.

He hadn´t.

It hadn´t been because he hadn´t loved her (oh, how he´d loved her, the click of her heels, the honey of her scent, the gleam of her smile), but apparently he had to be bad at _something_ , and that something was apparently loving.

He´d tried and tried, and she´d been forgiving and understanding like she´d always been, but it just hadn´t worked. He had felt guilty for having wasted her time, and he´d tried not to feel to offended when she ran right into his bodyguard´s waiting arms. Happy's a good man. He's glad for her. For both of them.

And well, he´d grieved and drowned in alcohol for a while, yes, but celibacy just isn't the thing for him, and he´d found his own waiting arms to fall into. The fact that everyone had twisted their panties when two perfectly fine Alphas decided to let themselves go wasted with each other only added to the charm of it. Tony loves causing polemics.

Steve is delicious. Steve is perfect. Steve is not an omega.

He tries reminding himself of how he doesn´t really care, how he´s more than perfectly fine with their crazy bed shenanigans and switching around, because well, it never gets boring and Steve really lives up to the "lady in the streets but a freak in the sheets" thing... But it´s just plain hard when a goddamned scent is enough to make his mind foggy and his body wants to go out, kill whoever´s in his way and fuck whoever´s at the end of it.

This is college, for fuck´s sake! How could anyone have forgotten their fucking suppressants?

He slams his circuit board on the table and goes to turn on the emergency air filtering. On his way back he starts a text to Steve because hey, he can turn this to his favor, right?

However, his expectations of kinky sex in inappropriate places is quickly dampened when the lab doors part to reveal a very pissed off Bruce sniffing on a rag.

Tony places the phone next to the discarded circuit board and extends a hand for the rag. When he brings it to his face he realizes it´s soaked in strong cologne or perfume of some sort. He smiles, amused.

"I take it you smelt them?"

Bruce huffs. "I wish it had been just that. I bumped into him."

"Him? Who´s `him´?"

"Have you met Thor´s brother?"

"...Thor´s not an only child?"

Bruce rolls his eyes. "He was there last semester when we went to his house for a movie night. Tall, black hair, pissed that we had eaten all the chips... Remember?"

"Hmmmmmaybe..." He mutters, unwilling to remind the other that he´d spent the last three movie nights eating Steve´s face. "Well, why is he on heat? Is the guy stupid or something?" And he turns back to his board.

"Apparently Thor´s parents want to check if he´s still fertile. Which, let me assure you, he is."

"Why would someone´s parents make you go off your suppressants to check if your baby oven is working? That´s a bit creepy. Super creepy, actually"

"Well he has to be fertile if he´s having Thor´s kid."

The board hits the table again, rather hard this time, and Tony turns back forcing his mind to backpedal because he had to have missed something.

"Tell me I heard wrong."

"Not at all. Thor was complaining to Steve last month, I thought you had heard. Their parents are arranging their engagement."

"... I´m sure I would remember something that´s up to porn levels of sick."

Bruce frowns, and then he seems to catch up because his face reddens and he shakes his head.

"They´re not biological brothers. Where have you been since you started hanging out with us?"

"In or under Steve, mostly."

"Typical."

"Sorry." Tony says with a grin that´s anything but.

\--

There are some days in which you just _know_ you shouldn´t get out of bed.

Loki is currently having one of those. From the moment he walked down the stairs and found Odin smiling contently he knew he should have gone back to sleep.

Now don´t take him wrong, Loki loves his adoptive father; without him, he´d probably be out there, whoring himself like so many other homeless Omegas.

Instead, when his biological father died (surrounded by suspicious circumstances, but then again, whenever a successful entrepreneur dies because of something other than a heart attack it's considered suspicious, isn't it?) and his mother had ran away with all the money she could carry, Odin had picked his associate´s little toddler and taken him into his own house. His lawyers had found Laufey´s wife soon enough and Loki had been formally fostered into the Borson household.

Odin had been a wonderful father, along with his wife he managed to incorporate Loki seamlessly amongst his closely knit family, and Loki loves him with every fiber of his being.

But _god_ does he have some stupid ideas every now and then.

Like his `Let´s marry you off to Thor so that you can get a fair share of the company´s actions´ initiative.

Or his `You should stop taking your pills for a while´ advice.

All in all, it's no wonder Loki wants to tail off. Unfortunately for him, this time the one to betray him would be his own body, and not his father.

When the first wave of the heat shoots through him, he bangs his forehead against the wall, hoping it´ll be enough to kill him, but he´s never been that lucky.

He makes it to the bathroom just in time, and slams the door shut right on a dazed Alpha´s face. He stumbles to the sink after locking it, and rinses the stranger´s scent off his nose. Only then does he pull his phone out to send a text. Thor gets there so fast Loki has to smile, picturing him knocking innocent freshmen out of the way.

And then he feels it.

Again, don´t take him wrong. Being an Omega is amazing. Sex is great, and the way he can sweep Alphas off their feet with a single, enigmatic smile is a blessing. But this is repulsive.

He loves Thor. He always has. He´s his brother. The thing is, his body doesn´t seem to care right now, instead flooding him with hormones to inform him that there is a very suitable Alpha just a thin door away.

He takes a deep breath into his soaked sleeve and opens the door. His body goes crazy with alarms; Thor´s not alone.

He´d been sure Bruce was a Beta, but the more he looks, the more his scent deepens and dizzies him. He swallows his pride and looks at Thor in the eye.

"Take me home." He means to order, but his voice wavers at the end and takes the tone of a plea. Bruce looks hungrily all over him and weren´t his eyes supposed to be brown? "Thor."

His brother reacts at his name, and turns to his friend. "Thanks, Bruce. I´ll take it from here."

Bruce nods. "Careful. It´s... Strong." He motions at the air around them, and Loki reddens in rage and shame.

"Well you´re not precisely smelling of daisies right now, Banner." He chides in as he tries his best to ignore the musky, smoky scent coming of him.

Bruce pays his words no heed and instead takes off his white lab coat and throws it at him. Loki rolls his eyes, but mutters a low `thank you´ and gets his arms through the sleeves either way.

"I´ll see you later." Thor offers and places a hand on Loki´s shoulder. Bruce bids them goodbye, and they hurry down the hallway.

\--

"You could try to behave like a human being, you know?" Thor mutters sullenly after they find themselves isolated in the safety of his car. Loki looks sideways, his nose and mouth still buried in the white coat´s sleeve, and glares.

"Big words for not having let go of my neck yet. And what the fuck are those grumblings supposed to be? Are you a lawnmower, by any chance?"

Thor reddens and leaves his neck alone, clenching his hand instead around the gear stick. After a second, though, he sighs.

"I hate this."

Loki´s glare softens.

"We both do."

"I´m sorry"

"Don´t be... You´re not the only one that's having trouble controlling it. I´ve been getting high on your friend´s scent for a reason." He smirks, but it loses strength when faced with Thor´s saddened pout.

"I don´t get how father expects us to do this."

"I see his logic. He´s got my best interests in mind." Loki shrugs. "He just forgot he raised us as brothers for twenty years."

"The worst thing is..."

Loki nods. He knows.

"Don´t go there, Thor. You´re too righteous to admit you want to fuck your brother and not throw yourself off a building right after."

"Thankfully you´re not."

He shrugs again, aware of Thor´s eyes on him, intense and questioning.

"I´m detached enough to know it´s my body that wants to fuck you, not me." And he gives a sigh of his own. "Sunny side up at least we know I can still give you devil spawn."

"Shut up, please."

"Fine."

\--

"Your dad arranging it so that you get to fuck your brother..." Tony starts again from the other end of the lab. "I still don´t know how I feel about it."

Bruce rolls his eyes but smiles. "It does sound like a bad porno, I´ll give you that."

"And I´ll take it." Tony´s grinning face peaks out from behind a motor. "So? Is Thor´s boy slash bro hot?"

"He is very, very pretty." Probably the adjective would have been better used on a young, clear-eyed, stereotypical Omega one would find in a sappy romance cover or movie poster, but he means it. With those green eyes, the thin rosy lips, and the soft black locks framing it, his face alone deserves it, even without taking the lean body wrapped in the tight-fitting clothing he seems to favor, with patches of white, smooth skin showing here and there whenever he stretched too much... He hasn´t had this much trouble controlling his Alpha instincts in a while. "But not my type. From what I´ve heard around campus, he´s a bit too much like Natasha."

"Fuck."

"Exactly."

Tony frowns deeper. "Now you´re making me curious. Do people talk about him a lot? How is it I´ve never heard of him?"

"They do. Quite a lot actually, the guy's a little scandal. Last semester I heard he hooked up with the exchange guy from Norway. You know, the one that´s always lifting at the gym."

"Svadilfari? What´s so special about him?"

"That´s what I thought, but now people are calling him `The Horse´ and it doesn´t take much to guess."

"... Whoa."

"And then he went and got caught with Professor Angrböda in the teacher's lounge." Bruce waits until Tony´s eyebrows have finished their ascension to nod in agreement and continue. "And last month with another Omega, the Sigyn girl, I think."

"How does Thor deal with that?"

"I don´t think he even tries anymore, I mean... The guy is just past caring and Thor seems to have accepted it."

"I want to meet this guy, he seems like my type of guy."

"If by that you mean an insufferable ass, then yeah, he probably is. But you won´t meet him anytime soon, he´ll be out of the scene for a while with that heat of his." He watches Tony´s mouth curl into a pout, and breaks into a smile. "He´s good friends with Clint, though, and I´m sure I´ve seen him with Nat a lot too."

"You´re the best, Brucie." Tony grins and for a second Bruce feels a bit guilty. Then he remembers Tony has been with Steve for over a year and a half now, and he´s never been the cheating type, not once he finally settles. He probably just wants someone new to cause trouble with.

\--

He smells Tony before he even hears his footsteps. It´s a strong scent reminiscing of metal and sweat that makes his body ache with rivalry, which his mind translates into a crazed urge to _throw him against the wall; fuck him; show him his place._

He takes a deep breath and counts to ten. Truth to be told, this reflex is not common (Hell, when faced with another Alpha during a breeding season, when their hormones are at their highest, any Alpha in their right mind would try and claw each other´s eyes off before going to look for someone to burn the bloodlust with)but it certainly has its advantages. A lot of them, actually.

It had been his lack of competitiveness that had fueled the rumors that he was the luckiest Omega boy on Earth for getting to date Peggy Carter, before he buffed up and everyone had to admit their relationship was a _bit_ peculiar, at least in the sense that no one would be getting knocked up anytime soon. However, as pleasantly beneficial as it is, it's been causing him trouble recently.

Especially when Tony smells like this.

As it´s not anywhere close to breeding season, he jumps to the second conclusion: Tony ran into someone in heat.

"How are we doing?" He asks with a smile. Tony doesn´t answer; he grips a hand tight in Steve´s hair and pulls down to bring him into a kiss. What a kiss, though. Bruising and demanding, and Steve finds himself yielding soon enough. Fuck his Alpha drive, he´ll top some other time. Preferably when they´re not at the back of an empty studio in the Arts building.

However, his moral restraints do nothing to stop the calloused hand that makes is way across his front and undoes the button of his jeans.

"We´re going to get caught." He whispers between kisses.

"Would you like that?"

Steve makes an attempt at rolling his eyes, but fails spectacularly when the aforementioned hand wraps around his half-hard cock and gives it a lazy pull. He gasps, and makes a move to reach for Tony´s still clothed and very noticeable erection, but the other just pulls away and quickens his jerking motions.

Apparently not allowed to return the favor, he bends forward instead (Their height difference makes for awesome positions sometimes. Some others just for horrible neck pain.) and gets to work with marking his neck.

The thrill of the public space, Tony´s scent and his practiced movements... It´s too much, and it isn´t long before Steve´s spilling all over Tony´s hand, which jerks him through his orgasm. He delivers a last, firmer bite to Tony´s neck and reaches for his crotch again.

"What about you?" He asks, half concerned and half blissfully uncaring with the afterglow. Tony grins devilishly.

And really, Steve did, at some point, have a strong moral code that prevented him from performing orals in a crammed bathroom stall, but somehow that feels like too long ago and right now, as Tony´s muffled moans drive him to hardness again he just can´t bring himself to care.

\--

"You´ve been gone for two weeks now, man, is it really that bad?" Clint asks, his back turned as he browses through the dresses and blouses in the closet, with Nat´s shower as background noise. He turns in time to see Loki´s face souring in the laptop´s screen.

"You speak as though you´ve never had one of your own." He mutters bitterly. "The green dress." He adds, as a suggestion.

Clint shakes his head. "Too fancy." And then, in response to Loki´s first commentary. "I had my first one, but I started with the suppressants the day after. Haven´t had one ever since."

"Lucky you." Loki eyes the yellow frilly blouse Clint has just placed on the bed. "What are you dressing her up for?"

"We´re going out for dinner. It´s our anniversary."

"You disgust me." Loki curls into a ball on his bed and Clint laughs. "People disgust me right now."

"You say it like it´s a one-time thing."

That prompts a smirk out of Loki. "I stand corrected. People disgust me now more than ever."

"What´s so bad about it? Or is it just your propension to drama again?" Clint asks, completing the outfit with black pants and high-heeled boots. Loki goes sour again.

"I want to fuck everyone."

"Again, you always do."

"I mean literally." Loki adds after a pause, and Clint is surprised to see a faint blush on his cheeks. "Last night Thor came in from the gym and I had to lock myself in the bathroom." Clint winces, but Loki goes on. "I can´t even look at my dad in the eye, and then there´s the fact that whatever Alpha happens to walk under my window is guaranteed to stop and stay there like an idiot until someone goes to send them away."

"You´re quality, huh?" Clint arches an eyebrow. He heard about the strength of Loki´s pheromones from Bruce just a couple days ago. Behind him, the shower sound dies, and he angles the laptop away from the bathroom door. Loki shakes his head. "My real parent´s weren´t native." He mutters, short and hurried as he always does whenever his biological family comes up in a conversation.

Well, that certainly explains it, Clint thinks. Alphas and Omegas are naturally attracted to their foreign counterparts´ scents, as it makes for genetic diversity. Clint experienced it firsthand with Thor and Natasha, whose scents were much more attractive to him than those of Steve, Bruce and Tony.

"It´ll wear off." He assures Loki. "And then you can go on your suppressants again and we´ll laugh about it later."

"You dare laughing about this at any time in the foreseeable future and I WILL hurt..." He stops mid-sentence, and inhales shallowly a couple of times. The faint blush comes back in full force and without another word, he jumps off the bed and disappears. Clint hears the sound of the bathroom door locking through the laptop´s speakers, and lets out another bark of laughter. He closes the computer and leaves Loki to deal with his problems alone.

When he turns, Nat is there, clad only in the boots and the black lace panties.

"We´re gonna be late." He warns, but he´s smiling as he pulls his own shirt over his head.

"We can get another reservation." Is all she says. Clint feels himself get wetter and harder, and lets her crawl on the bed over him. Life is amazing.

\--

Thor wakes up slowly, feeling relaxed for the very first time in a while, and inhales deeply.

He notices right then something is off. Wonderfully off.

There´s no metallic, fresh or minty hue to his house´s old common scent. His muscles aren´t tense and he doesn´t feel irritated. He takes his time getting dressed and goes down for breakfast with a smile plastered on his face. Loki is already down, smiling as well and smelling of nothing but his usual products.

"Let´s all agree that this was a stupid experiment and NEVER repeat it." His brother says as he picks him up into a bone-crushing hug.

"Never again, please." He agrees, and pays no mind to the footsteps signaling their parents´ arrival to the kitchen.

"It finally wore off, huh?" Frigga asks with a smile of her own. Thor lets go of Loki so that their mother can have a go at hugging him, and their father after her.

"I´m glad you´re feeling better, son." Odin mutters. "I´m proud of you for enduring it."

Loki lets himself be squeezed, obviously happy over anything else, but Thor´s throat goes dry.

"Dad... About the wedding..."

"I´ve told you not to worry, Thor." Odin pats his shoulder. "It´s scheduled for after you´ve both graduated later this year, my lawyers and the planner are already fixing things up."

Just like that, Loki´s face falls at the other side of the table, and he figures it mirrors his own. He expects him to say something, but all he does is shrug and he frowns. Has his brother finally accepted their fate?

"What are you planning?" He asks as soon as they´re both sitting in his car. Loki doesn´t have any morning classes today, but he´s apparently decided to leave early and get a head start in catching up with his projects.

"Excuse me?"

"You didn´t say anything when he brought the wedding up again. What are you planning?"

"Why, nothing. I´m just overjoyed to be outside. I´ll worry about that later."

Thor frowns. "Just promise me your getaway plan doesn´t involve murdering me."

Loki laughs. "Not at all, dear brother, that would be much too easy."

\--

"I need a passport."

"I believe there are plenty of government facilities where you can acquire one." Natasha doesn´t lift her gaze from the stapled papers she´s reading. She restrains a smile when she feels Loki´s frustration rise.

"You know what I´m asking for." He grumbles.

"Are we planning a confidential honeymoon, Loki dear?"

"Oh, no. Thor´s staying. And that is also confidential."

She looks up to find him smirking, and rolls her eyes.

"That´s your plan? Escaping the country just like that? What a cliché." She whispers back. "Your father will look for you and then you will have to explain him why you think his engagement is stupid anyways."

"It´ll buy me time, though."

"And he won´t notice the leak of the company´s funds to wherever you´re hiding. Good thinking."

"Maybe I could, you know, work? Give me some credit."

"Yes, surely you´ll make enough money as an amateur actor to stick t your current lifestyle." She counters, and Loki finally sits down.

"You might want to be more careful with what you say dear, you´re starting to sound like you care." He grunts.

"Oh, I care. A bit. Sometimes." She allow herself a sharp smile. "Besides, Thor will probably be suspected of if you just disappear and whoever looks for you finds out none of you were exactly cuntin the days for your wedding."

"I´ll find him and alibi..." Loki starts, and then shakes his head as if noticing what he just said. "It´s not like I´m falling off the face of Earth forever, Natasha." He frowns. "I just need time to think."

"Think fast, then. Before they pull out the white suit:" She smirks. "If you´re cynical enough to marry in white, I mean."

"Think of it as an ironic remark on my behalf." He sighs. "Come on, as my wedding gift."

"I thought you weren´t getting married."

"I´m going to murder you." Loki grits his teeth, glaring at her in a way that only encourages her to smirk harder. "I don´t want the company, Natasha. I wouldn´t take it if they offered it to me whole. Not if it means screwing up what I have with Thor."

"Then why don´t you tell you father?"

"I did. When he first announced it." He sighs. "He told me it's just a formality to get through a loophole, to make sure I can get protection from his lawyers and a share of the inheritance, you know how the law is."

Natasha nods and her lips twist in disgust; even if her relief of not having been born an Omega is more closely related to commodity and personal preference than any prejudice anyone might have towards the sex in general, she still thinks their circumstances are unfair at best and simply idiotic at worst. They live in the 21st cemtury and Omegas can only aspire to own physical or legal property by ways of parental inheritance or marriage. If even a son of a family as powerful as Loki´s is not excluded from it then things are much worse than she´d thought at first.

"And what did he say about Thor?"

"Nothing. I do believe he thinks I see Thor as a good friend, but not a brother."

"And that you´ll come to like him in time."

"Exactly." He rubs a hand across his face, and she´s never seen him look so defeated. "How was your anniversary dinner?"

Natasha smiles, pleasantly surprised at the question and moreso at the memory that comes with it.

"Oh, we didn´t make it in time."

That brings a smile out of Loki.

\--

"Hey, birdie."

Clint rolls his eyes. He knows _that_ tone.

"What is it, jerkface?"

Tony laughs. "How are things going?"

"Pretty fine." He answers, sliding along the bench to make a space for him, and then a suspicion begins to grow in him.

"Are you here to cancel movie night? Because if you are then you´re a douche for offering your place and we won´t reschedule for you again"

"That was ONE time Clint, one!" Tony counters. "And no. I actually just wanted to ask you to invite your friend over."

"What friend?"

"Thor´s brother."

"... You want me to take Loki to your house?"

"Loki... Weird name."

"You didn´t even know his name, why would you want him in your house?" Clint narrows his eyes "Is it because of the heat? Did you smell him? Look Tony, if you´re planning on cheating on my friend with my friend then I will personally..."

"Hey hey hey, cut the threats birdie." Tony cuts him hurriedly and holds his hands in front of his chest in a surrendering gesture. "Why would I ever cheat on Steve? Have you met Steve? He´s the best! I just heard about the guy and he sounds funny. He´s funny, right?"

"That depends on your definition of funny."

"Sounds like someone I want to meet, then. Anyone capable of generation more hallway gossip than me is a guaranteed get-along."

"You _would_ get along."

"See?"

Clint rolls his eyes; this is going to end up bad, he just knows it. "Fine, I´ll invite him. Not sure he´ll go, though. Loki does what he wants."

"You´re the best, birdie." He pats his shoulder. "I´ll buy you a new bow for your birthday."

"You better."


	2. I met a boy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It´s a small world after all...

**2**

**I met a boy**

Loki frowns. He´s been reading the same paragraph in the same book for the last ten minutes, and he doesn´t seem to be getting any of it. He looks up at the clock and sighs; ten to seven, which means he has approximately five minutes to grab something from the cafeteria and get to his class.

He knows he should have gotten something to eat much sooner, but his work has stockpiled to unexpected levels, and he´s nowhere close to finishing any of it. He shoves his stuff in his bag as fast as he can, and flees the library. The last thing he needs right now is to get sick because he neglected eating.

The place is thankfully empty, save for a short guy on a black undershirt paying for something. He makes his way to the register machine when he steps away.

"Is there still any..."

"We´re closed already." The young woman behind the counter shakes her head.

"But I just saw you selling a coffee to that guy."

"That was our last sell, the system locks itself automatically at seven p.m. everyday."

Loki feels himself boiling as he checks his phone´s screen."

"It´s still five to seven!" He exclaims, but the girl shrugs and goes through the door to the kitchen.

"I´m going to steal something." He warns loud enough for her to hear.

"Go on." Her voice reaches back from behind the door. "The cams are watching."

"Spiteful witch..." He mutters under his breath, when a hand lands on his forearm and distracts him.

He had thought the guy had left already, but he´d apparently stayed to watch the show. Loki takes him in; short, dark and wild hair, brown eyes, a goatee, toned arms and a led light pendant that projects a blue light circle over the fabric of his undershirt.

"Have a story with the lady?" He asks with an ample smile. Loki huffs.

"I might or might not have started the rumor that there were pubes in the food." He whispers with a pinch of pride in his voice. That had been one of his finest ones.

"Nice." The guy laughs. "I got the impression that you were on a hurry?"

"I am. I need to be in the Arts building in..." He checks the time again and curses loudly. "Two minutes."

The guy whistles. "You have a bit of running to do." And then he throws something in the air, slowly so that Loki has a good chance of catching it. It´s just a wrapped, generic-brand cinnamon bun, but right now it looks like a roast beef to him. "I didn´t want it anyways, but my friend insisted that I had to consume something other than caffeine."

Loki looks behind him and finds a steaming styrofoam cup resting on a table.

"You sure?" He asks, dubious.

"You look like you need the sugar much more than I do."

Loki grins. "Congratulations, then. You´ve officially made it to my not-kill list. And just because I really like you..." He adds and lowers his voice to a whisper. "There _are_ pubes in the food, stick to packaged goods." He smirks before running away.

He tears the package open as he makes his way through the campus, and he decides it after replaying the scene in his mind and nearly losing his pace when the sugary frosting flavor explodes in his mouth. That guy is really fine.

\--

"You said you were going to get something asides from coffee." Bruce observes, when Tony struts into the lab with the steaming cup in his hands. He takes the time to lock the door behind him, since it´s way past the working hours (your father paying for the University´s lab has its advantages) and shrugs.

"There was a guy that seemed way hungrier than me and that was remarkably late for his class. I gave him my cinnamon bun." He explains, making sure he look as innocent as possible. He likes eating as much as the next person, but he´s never been one to take food breaks while working.

"So selfless of you..." Bruce rolls his eyes.

"You know me." He smiles and goes back to his work, wondering briefly if the guy made it to his class.

 

"I met a guy yesterday night." He comments next morning when he picks Steve up. The blond´s expression becomes slightly amused.

"Now that´s something I want my boyfriend to tell me."

Tony laughs long and hard, speeding past a yellow light. "Yeah, bought him dinner and everything. A night to remember."

Steve laughs at well, with that smile that makes his eyes crinkle at the corners in that way he absolutely loves. "So? What about him?"

"Nothing." Tony shrugs. "We talked because apparently he was starving and had to run to class. He said he had to go to the Arts building and I wondered if you knew him."

"How did he look?" Steve asks as Tony pulls up in the parking lot.

"Black hair, green eyes, about your height?"

"Hmm... No one comes to mind... He probably studies at another wing of the building." He says and checks his watch for the fifth time. Tony hates that watch. He gave it to him for his last birthday, so it's nice and expensive and you _really_ have to remember to take it off before sex, unless you want a scrapped everything. They always forget. "Actually, I have to run too."

"Are we late?" Tony frowns; he´s pretty sure he didn´t sleep in this time.

Steve shakes his head. "We can´t afford a model for figure drawing right now so whoever gets to class the latest has to be the model." He explains with an embarrassed smile. Tony smirks and pulls him close for a hug.

"Well, I wouldn´t want to share you. Run, baby!"

Steve chuckles and kisses him goodbye before sprinting off. Tony watches him grow smaller as he crosses the campus before he takes his portfolio from the backseat and makes his way to the Engineering building

\--

The place is crowded, just like every other day at midday. Loki´s actually glad his last morning class was cancelled, as he´d managed to get into the queue before it had turned obscenely long.

"Hey there." A hand wraps around his forearm and he has a massive sensation of déjà vu. Sure enough, it´s the same guy from last night, grinning up at him. He returns the gesture.

"I figure you want me to repay the favor?" He asks, and the guy answers by grabbing his wrist to drop a bill on his open palm.

"Two packaged sandwiches."

"Sticking to my advice, I see." Loki smirks. "At least entertain me while I wait." He demands when he notices the guy is preparing to head for a table, so he turns back instead.

"Fine. Hey, did you say you had classes at the Arts building?"

"I did, why?"

"My boyfriend has most of them there too, and he didn´t know who you were."

Loki pouts. He´s found out his pouts often bring amazing results. "Boyfriend, huh?"

The guy smirks like he knew what he´d been thinking all along. "Yeah, sorry."

"And here I was hoping we could have pubes soup together some other time." He sighs dramatically.

"Not pubes soup, please." The guy seems amused, and then seems to hesitate a bit before adding. "Maybe something else, though. I don´t think he´ll mind."

"Is it an open thing, then?"

That seems to shake him. "No, not really."

Loki shrugs inwardly. If the guy hasn´t made his mind up then there´s not much he can do. "What does he study?"

"Visual Arts."

"Then I surely haven´t crossed him, at least not in a while. Performing Arts is on the other side of the building."

"That would explain it, yes. So you´re an actor?"

"No, I´m actually the only student of the recently inaugurated Circus Skills Faculty." He smirks, and the guy rolls his eyes.

"Ain´t you a charming one?"

Loki blows him a mock kiss and moves forward to order. He finds him again waiting at an empty table.

"There you go." He throws the packaged meals and slips the spare change across the surface. The guy gestures at the free chair across him, but he shakes his head.

"Some other time, I´ve got a guy waiting."

The guy frowns and smiles at the same time, and the look is strangely appealing. He chooses to ignore the voice at the back of his head that tells him that if this particular guy showed up someday in a duck mask he´d secretly start finding them appealing.

"What about the pubes soup?"

Loki half turns, still looking at him and grins his best smile.

"Oh, he´s not invited. That´s you and me only." And leaves immediately after in the way he knows is guaranteed to get him at least a call to the number he´d hastily scribbled on the sandwich wrapper.

\--

"Are you seeing someone right now?"

Bruce looks up at the sound of his friend´s voice and frowns.

"You?"

Tony huffs. "Very funny Bruce, you should get an award."

Bruce smiles. Usually Tony appreciates it when people react with humor, which probably means...

"What´s wrong?" He asks.

His friend stays silent for a moment, before sighing.

"Remember the guy from last night?"

"... Yes?"

He lifts something for him to see. It´s a plastic wrapper with a phone number scribbled in sharpie. He frowns, this time for real.

"Do I look desperate enough to take your leftovers?"

"Of course not, but I thought you might want to loosen up a bit. He´s hot as fuck and from what I understood, he´s looking for a good lay only."

"And you don´t want to..."

"I said he was hot, didn´t I? But I´m not going to fuck things up with Steve for a couple of pretty eyes and a good ass, I mean I´ve got that with him already and he sticks up through all my shit, so..." He shrugs.

"You should write a book."

"I know." He finally smiles. "Besides, he seemed smart. Or funny at least."

Bruce watches him carefully. "You really did like him, didn´t you?"

Tony shrugs, looking guilty. "Sometimes I do wish I was single for a night only."

\--

Loki plops down on a chair next to his friends and leans in with a smirk that makes Clint roll his eyes.

"Not again."

Natasha smiles. "Someone new on the radar?"

"A good one." He nods. "A bit short, though, I hope he compensates."

"Alpha?"

"Yeah." He rubs his nape, embarrassed. "You see, the thing with Sigyn... Well, that girl is literally too good for this world, and I screwed her up good. Now Omegas remind me of her so I... Stay away from them?"

Clint gifts him with a teasing smile. "Do I detect a note of regret for never giving her a call? Or for cheating on her with her sister?"

Loki pushes him against Natasha. "You would regret it too. She was something else."

"Well, didn´t hold you back much, did it?" asks Natasha and Loki smiles.

"Oh, I feel intensely sorry for her." He starts. "In fact, this is my coping method."

At his insistence, he hands Clint one of the snacks he bought and asks for it back after he´s had a bite. "When are you going to see this guy?"

"I give him two days."

"Well give him three, you have something on Friday."

"Do I, now?" He asks, and even Natasha seems interested.

"We have movie night on Friday. Tony asked me to invite you."

"... Tony?" The name rings no bells.

"You´ve seen him." Clint tries. "When we had the movie night at your house and you were throwing a bitch fit over a bag of chips?"

"Oh."

"You don´t remember?"

"I had much more important things to think of than the bunch of idiots in my living room; I was emotionally dependant on those chips that day."

"Why?"

"The pregnancy scare to rule them all." He admits. He´s not exactly proud, but...

"Svadilfari?" Natasha rolls her eyes at his nod. "Haven´t you heard about condoms? They´re these funny penis sheaths for those occasions in which you want to fuck someone senseless but not have their babies, I´ll get you some."

"The guy had just gotten here!" He exclaims, blushing. "He didn´t speak much English and for practicality´s sake the only words I learnt in his language were `fuck me´, `harder´ and `stop´ "

"Typical..." She sighs and Loki huffs. He hates it when she of all people judges him

"I didn´t even let him knot me, I´m not that stupid."

"Do we have to know that?" Clint mutters through his third snack.

"I listen to bedroom trouble from both of you all the time, of course you have to." He clears his throat. "So? What does this Tony guy want with me?"

"I´m pretty sure he just wants to congratulate you for sleeping with your teacher."

"An admirer, then?"

"A competitor, actually. Or he was a competitor. He´s been with his boyfriend for a year now."

"Ugh, fallen in battle... I´ll give him my condolences." He huffs again. "I really wanted to see this guy."

"Keep it in your pants for a night, would you?"

"Anything for you, dear Clint." He sighs and forces a smile. If the guy is going to call him (which he is definitively going to do) a day more will do wonders for him. His luck is amazing.

\--

Thor wakes up Friday morning with what Loki often calls `A feeling that Life is preparing to screw you up´.

Until that very day he´s thought Loki's just been being his usual dramatic self. Life forces don´t randomly conjoin to ruin a particular individual.

That same night, he´s sure he'll never doubt Loki´s theory again.

It started perfectly fine, like any other Friday. They had a movie night scheduled for days now, and he would enjoy a nice night out after a stressful week.

It´s only after he goes up the stairs to drop his books that he feels something dark and viscous settling at the bottom of his stomach.

"Are you going out?" He asks, poking his head through Loki´s door. His brother doesn´t acknowledge him, busy as he is choosing between two tees.

"Well yes."

"On a date?" He knows, he knows Loki dates others. He doesn´t care, he does his fair share of sleeping around as well. The only difference is that he keeps it to himself.

"Not tonight."

"... But we have a movie night tonight. Clint and Natasha are both coming." He frowns. "Is it with Anansi and Eris?"

"No. And I know that. Actually, it was Clint who invited me." He explains, finally settling on a tee and folding the discarded one to be put back in the drawer.

"Clint invited you to the movie night?" Thor blinks a couple of times, dumbfounded.

"He did."

"And you´re actually coming."

"I am."

"That´s... Great, I guess?" He shrugs. "I´ll wait for you, then." And he makes his way to the living room while the feeling of dread intensifies.

"So... How was your week?" Loki asks as they pull off the driveway. Thor looks quizically at his brother; he´s not usually in this good mood.

"Good. I´m halfway done with my final project and I nearly lost a finger today."

"Your skills are supreme. What´s your project again? A kitchen?"

"A playground." Thor rolls his eyes but smiles as he does so. When most people look at him he doesn't usually strike them as the designer type, but he's quite good at both physics and manual labor, and his creativity spurts great things more often than not. "How was yours?"

"They held the auditions for the play yesterday. I think I landed a main role." He waves it off. "Also I met someone."

"You? What a surprise." Thor grins even as he takes Loki´s playful punch to the shoulder. The night is cold, the streets are empty, and the bad feeling he had earlier has already faded away. "Does `someone´ have a name?"

"He surely does. But I didn´t get the time to find out, I just gave him my number."

"Did he call you?"

"He did. Turned out we both had something tonight so we´re meeting for lunch tomorrow."

Thor frowns at that. "Lunch? You don´t do lunch."

Loki pouts. "He can´t really spend a night on a motel all of a sudden... Apparently he´s got a boyfriend."

"Loki..." Thor shakes his head, annoyed, and then something else catches his attention. "So you agreed to have lunch with him? Just lunch, no sex, actual lunch, lunch?"

By the way Loki looks pointedly out the window, it´s a sore spot.

"He's funny." He mutters after a second of uncomfortable silence. "Besides I might get a quickie in the bathroom if I play my cards right."

"You _might_ get a quickie. Which means you don´t actually care if you get it or not. Did you honestly and willingly set up a date knowing you would most likely _not_ have sex?"

"It seems like it, ok?" He snaps back and Thor grins.

"Whoa, you like this guy."

"Of course I don´t. That would be stupid, wouldn´t it? Considering..." And he gestures between the both of them, which erases the smile from Thor´s face.

The engagement.

Silence spreads between them for the rest of the way, until they reach the gate to Tony´s house. Thor pushes the button on the intercom, and Jarvis lets them in immediately, and directs him to park next to Clint´s car. As soon as they get off the car the old butler is waiting for them at the door.

"Welcome Mr. Borson, and I figure this is your brother? Mr. Stark and the rest of your friends are already in the living room."

"Thanks Jarvis, we´ll see ourselves in." Thor thanks him and leads Loki up the familiar set of stairs.

"Classy." His brother mutters, and Thor knows he's comparing every single detail with their own house. "Stark like the gun brand Stark?"

"Yeah. Don´t mention that."

"Daddy issues?"

"Like you´re one to talk."

"Said the pot to the kettle."

Thor laughs and pushes him, before opening to door to the aforementioned living room. "Hey guys. Are we late?"

Only Bruce and Steve seem mildly puzzled when they see Loki, which means he said the truth and Clint actually invited him.

"Hey big guy, we´re just warming up." Tony´s voice comes from behind the bar, and when he looks at Loki to introduce him to their host, his words die in his throat.

Loki has always been pale, almost too pale, but this time it´s different; if his face looses a little more color it´ll become translucent. His eyes have widened not so much as to be obvious, but enough so that Thor notices immediately, and his lips have contracted into a tight straight line. Feeling like an abyss opened under his feet, he turns to Tony and finds a mirroring expression.

His mind races to join the loose ends and he wants the ground to open up and swallow him right there.

Loki had actually liked this guy.  
This guy who´s Thor´s friend.  
This guy who has a boyfriend.  
A loving, dedicated boyfriend who is also Thor´s friend.

Maybe it´s association with Loki what causes Life to spit on you, he concludes.

"So you´re the infamous Loki?" Tony makes his way to them, all former hesitation forgotten and extends a hand that Loki shakes.

"In the flesh. Thanks for the invitation, I guess?"

"The more the merrier." Tony answers, not meeting his eyes, and lets go of the other´s hand to return to the bar. Out the corner of his eye Thor sees him pour a generous amount of scotch in a glass.

"You already know Bruce, Loki." He turns to his brother and gestures to his friend. Bruce nods politely in response to Loki´s waving. "And this is Steve. Tony´s boyfriend." He squeezes his brother´s forearm to punctuate the last word. "He studies in our building."

Steve stands up and offers a hand as well. "Pleased to meet you."

"Same. Visual Arts, right?"

Steve frowns in confusion. "Have we met before?"

Thor feels his palms get sweaty, but Loki seems to know what he´s doing. "Barely. My friend Anansi and I modeled for your class last semester."

Steve´s face lightens.

"Right, the face studies! Anansi was the guy with the spider tattoo on his neck, right?" He slaps his forehead. "How could I forget you? I have a sketchbook page filled with your cheekbones and your nose."

"Thank y..."

Tony cuts all conversations by plopping down on the sofa with his glass in hand. "Hey, what are we watching?"

That solves the `newcomer awkwardness´ in less than a second, as everyone shouts their suggestions for the night.

"Are they always this noisy?" Loki whispers.

"They´re toning it down for you." Thor answers and then sighs. "We have to talk, Loki."

His brother´s response is to make his way to Clint and Natasha and sit next to them, and Thor leaves him alone. He isn´t in the mood to discuss the matter either.

As always, a simple thriller is chosen to open the night, and Thor stretches from his place on his favorite beanbag to dim the lights.

He doesn´t miss the way his friend and his brother´s faces turn briefly to each other as soon as darkness settles over them.

\--

"You can´t do it." He says and it makes Loki want to punch him; of course he can´t, he´s engaged to his fucking brother, for god´s sake. But of course that´s not what worries Thor.

"You have never cared about who I sleep with before." He answers coldly. It´s three in the morning and Thor has to choose that very moment to sit him down in their father's study for a lecture, as soon as they come back from the stupid movie night he should have never agreed to go to in the first place, he has the right to be pissed.

"Because I don´t give a rat´s ass about them! If you sleep with a whole fraternity, no one´s going to come out hurt when we get married." Thor grunts, trying to keep his voice low for their parents´ sake. "These are my friends we´re talking about. Even if you could somehow slip off the engagement I wouldn´t let you anywhere near Tony because I simply refuse to let Steve suffer just because you can´t keep it in your pants. There´s no happily ever after, and you _won´t_ break them up for a two-weeks long fling, am I clear?"

Loki opens his mouth to reply and, much to his surprise, finds out he has nothing. The discovery startles him. He doesn't even like Tony that much. He´s hot, of course, but he finds lots of people good-looking. Witty? He bedded his smartest, more sarcastic teacher, it doesn´t get much wittier than that. There´s literally no logical reason for him to feel as deflated as he does when he realizes that Thor is right this time

He shakes his head, frustrated and defeated, and watches as Thor´s face softens and there´s only a tired sadness where a moment ago there had been nothing but sternness.

"Look..." He starts, but Loki´s not in the mood to listen to him anymore. He rises from the couch and heads up the stairs, leaving his brother behind.

\--

"Are you coming?" Steve asks, twisting in the sheets to look at Tony.

"Yeah." It takes a moment but he makes his way into the bed. "I had a good time tonight."

Steve smiles. At first it had looked like the addition of Thor´s brother would make things uncomfortable, but both Clint an Natasha had been in their best mood around him, and they had soon forgotten about it.

"It was pretty interesting. Why were you so insistent on inviting Loki?"

Tony shrugs between his arms.

"I wasn´t kidding, I literally heard some hardcore rumors and thought I wanted to meet him."

"He does seem like your kind of guy." Steve chuckles, but he stops as he notices Tony has stiffened and turned to face him.

" _You_ are my kind of guy." He says before he straddles him, and if only the tone had been smug instead of stubborn maybe Steve hadn´t felt a bit uneasy.

He mentally shrugs it off, and sets to enjoy the feeling of Tony´s lips and the coarse caress of his beard all over his chest and stomach.


	3. Right as rain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The best thing one can do when it's raining is to let it rain.

**3**

**Right as rain**

Anansi is watching him.

Loki knows it even without looking up from his cup of instant noodles, and not just because they both stopped talking suddenly. In fact, their conversations always have this abrupt interruptions whenever any of them gets a sudden idea that´s just too good to let pass.

Actually, he doesn´t know how he knows. He just does. And it´s pissing him off.

"Something on my face, handsome?" He asks.

Anansi seems to ignore his words and instead take his willingness to talk as his cue to ask.

"Is that him?"

It´s only self-control (and despite what everyone else may think, he has an awful lot of that. The current source of his terrible snappiness can attest to that.) that prevents him from whipping his head around. Instead, he shoots a single, hurried look out the corner of his eye, and nods.

"Nice one."

"Yeah, for all the good it does to me." He retorts, irritated and purposefully ignoring both Tony and Bruce as they walk past their table. Across him, Anansi frowns.

"Are you _really_ going to do what your brother told you?"

Loki shrugs.

"He´s got a point."

"What? The boyfried? Because if it´s the boyfriend then I could totally take care of him for you, you know?"

"You could totally take care of the whole swimming team." Loki huffs with a smirk that Anansi mirrors.

"Of course I could, if my best friend was in dire need, and you wouldn´t hear a complaint from me, I´m that good."

"Poor, poor Anansi who´s such a good friend and is still not getting Natasha´s number."

Anansi slams his hand on the table.

"Why not?" He asks with the voice of one that´s asked for the same answer a thousand times and is still not satisfied.

"You´re still useful, I won´t have you horribly dismembered."

"Your brother´s, then."

"Now you´re just trying to piss me off." Loki laughs and goes back to his soup.

\--

It will take two weeks for everything to start down the path to imminent disaster, but Bruce doesn´t have a clue when he sits down at the lab with his packaged sandwich (Tony had insisted) and asks how things are with Steve.

Tony looks up like a deer staring into headlights and Bruce has to hold back a sigh that's probably strong enough to power an eolian generator for several days.

"Everything´s fine." Tony answers at last. "Why? Did he tell you something?"

He shakes his head. "You just look... Weird. Like you didn´t sleep a second in the whole weekend."

"I usually don´t, I don´t see why that would be weird."

Bruce decides he´s done being nice about it and shoots to kill.

"Is it Thor´s brother?"

"Why would he have anything to do with anything?" Tony asks back so quickly it nearly cuts the end of his question. "Why do you ask?"

"It´s just too much of a coincidence, that you´re so hell-bent on meeting him, you buy him lunch and get his number at the cafeteria and two days later the guy shows up at the movie night."

"I didn´t know it was him when I gave him my food!" Tony exclaims, obviously offended before he notices his slip. "How do you know it was him? I never even told you how the guy looked!"

Bruce shrugs. "Call it both a hunch and the fact that ten minutes ago you were trying not to look at him so hard you tripped over the same table twice." He stays silent for a second, measuring his next words. "Please tell me I´m a bastard for thinking you´d do that to Steve."

"You´re a bastard. It´s Thor´s brother, I´m not going to sleep with him! They´re getting married, why would I sleep with him?!" Tony´s answer is tainted in irritation, but it fades and he rests his forehead on the palm of his hand. "I didn´t know it was him that night, Bruce, I swear... I really just wanted to meet him because he sounded..."

"Like someone you´d like?"

"Well, maybe, sue me! Had I been single I would gladly have spent the weekend shagging the guy, wedding or not, but here I am! I haven´t so much as crossed a word with him!"

"Maybe that´s it." Bruce points out, causing him to cut his rant abruptly.

"Maybe that´s what?"

"I´m saying maybe you should talk to him. Get to know him a little, to get rid of the infatuation."

"I´m not infatuated. No one ever uses "infatuated" anymore, Bruce." Tony answers stubbornly, and then adds. "Besides, two minutes ago you were all over me because you´d thought I´d cheat on Steve and now you´re telling me to date the guy?"

"Not date him. Hang out with him, as friends. If he´s truly as they say, he´ll be done with you in no time."

"I get the logics, but why are you encouraging me?"

"Because you´re my friend. And I´ve seen you cheat on many people before, but I know you never did with Pepper and I know you don´t want to do it with Steve." He shrugs. "Sometimes these things happen, it´s only natural and one has to sort through them in a way that doesn't affect your loved one."

Tony sighs. "I don´t want to do anything stupid, Brucie."

"Then don´t." Bruce takes pity on his friend, and pats his back. "Just don´t let it go anywhere. Be his friend, either you´ll grow out of it or he´ll get tired of you."

"I hope you´re right."

\--

Loki may seem cold and emotionless to most people, but Clint has seen a wide variety of expressions in Loki´s face since he knows him. He´s seen him annoyed, angry, embarrassed, desperate and, on one particular occasion he wishes he could forget involving an unlocked bedroom door and an unannounced visit, horny.

He´s even seen him scared, crying, and hopelessly in love, whenever Anansi and Eris are busy and he agrees to help him practice his lines for a play. All in all, he´s willing to bet he knows at least 98% of his expression repertoire.

However, the face he pulls when Tony appears by the archery range and heads for them is one he´s never seen before.

"Hey birdie."

"Hey jerk." Clint lets his arrow loose before he turns to greet his friend, and he notices Loki has started gathering all his papers and stuffing them unceremoniously in his bag.

"Hey Loki."

"... Hi. I´ll see you later, Clint. I have to meet with Anansi."

Clint shrugs; he´s never liked Loki´s friends that much, and he´d rather give up on Loki´s company than having Anansi showing up.

"I´ll see you tomorrow."

"Sure." Loki hangs his bag from his shoulder and attempts to leave but Tony steps in his way.

"Which way are you going?" He asks.

"Parking lot." Loki answers quickly, and Clint knows he´s lying.

"me too, I´ll walk you." Tony counters. Clint arches an eyebrow because Tony´s lying as well.

"... Fine."

\--

"So..."

"Save it." Loki interrupts as soon as Tony has opened his mouth. "Let´s just forget it happened."

"Sure, I can do that." The other answers as he follows him around the main building. "But hey, I wanted you to know I asked Clint to invite you before..."

"Forget it happened." Loki repeats.

"Right. Whatever, I had been wanting to meet you. I don´t see anything wrong with us hanging out, just as friends."

Loki stops on the spot, turns to face him and knows he shouldn´t. Then again, that has never stopped him before, has it?

"Fine." He agrees before he gets a chance to think it over, and then he asks, in consideration to Thor´s worries. "Won't your boyfriend have a problem with it?"

"You didn´t look like you cared about my boyfriend."

"But you do."

Tony frowns and looks uncomfortable for a second, before he recovers. "I don´t think so. Not as long as we keep it strictly as friends."

Friends, friends, friends... The word is mocking him.

"So? Want to grab a bite with me?" Tony asks again.

"I know of a good place close by." Loki answers, knowing he´ll regret it.

He wants it to be over from the moment they walk into the small café and sit on a table by the window, so he strikes right away.

"Has the magic happened yet? Are we friends now?" He asks with a teasing smile, and the way Tony rolls his eyes makes him smile wider.

"Do you have to? I´m trying to be nice here."

"Oh, are you? Then by all means go on." Loki crosses his hands on the table and watches him expectantly with an innocent smile.

"God, you´re a douche. Ehm... You said you were an actor, right?"

"I am."

"Your faculty´s preparing a play, isn´t it? Which one?"

"Les Miserables." Loki admits. Across him Tony raises a judging eyebrow and he shrugs. "You know people. The movie comes out and suddenly they´re either experts or obsessed with getting every possible adaptation of the damned thing. Apparently the Dean himself ordered it because he´s determined to sell all of the tickets this year."

"Who are you playing?"

Loki can´t help it, it just comes out.

"Cosette, of course."

Tony huffs. "Yes, you do look like the kind of girl to drop a revolution for."

"Please, Marius hardly knew what he was doing anyways." Once again it comes out automatically. He feels... Comfortable. Huh.

"I can't argue with you there." He grins. "So... Where did you meet Thing One and Thing Two?"

"... I´m going to assume you mean Clint and Natasha."

"Who else?"

"Well, I´m afraid that´s classified information." Loki smiles.

"It was at a swingers club, wasn´t it?"

"Now that would be too easy." He shakes his head. "I met Clint on high school. Thor introduced us."

"The scary russian came later, huh?"

Loki shrugs. "She´s a nice bonus." The silence is bound to become awkward if he lets it grow too much, so he adds. "What did you say your Major was?"

"Mechanical Engineering."

"I see. Planning on taking the family business, then?"

"Gently go fuck yourself." Tony answers with an annoyed smirk.

"Myself? With so many available people in the world? That would be such a waste." Loki smirks back. "Then what are your plans, if I might know?"

Tony´s smirk changes into a plain old smile that brightens his face, he takes a deep breath and launches on a most expensive rant about intelligent software and a project that, if Loki remembers correctly, is named after his butler.

\--

All in all it goes pretty well, according to Tony. After he managed to get distracted from the pink, teasing lips by the words coming out of them, of course. He walks away from the `not date´ two hours later, after Bruce had called to remind him they´d promised to go for a beer with some guys from the Sciences faculty.

He also walks away with the knowledge that Loki drinks his coffee black with five sugars (which means that half of his dad´s fortune probably goes straight into a lucky dentist´s pocket), that his favorite movie's a weird science fiction slash action movie involving a mental asylum and alternate realities, and that he has an uncanny ability to mimic Thor´s voice. Pretty well for a first not-date.

He enters the bar and finds Bruce right away. When he´s a bit closer he notices his company; Selvig, an older Beta that studied a Master´s Degree in something Astrophysics related (he always forgot exactly _what_ ) a tanned, short brunette Omega he´d crossed at the hallway sometime, and a white, black haired, busty Beta he´d never seen before.

"Hey Brucie. Hey Eric. Who are your friends?" He asks after he´s taken a seat at the table and gestured for the waitress to bring him a beer. The Beta girl winks at him and he can´t help but to grin back. Eric points at her first and then at the other.

"Darcy Lewis and Jane Foster. Jane here got transferred from New Mexico last month."

"Well, welcome then. Tony Stark." He offers her a smile and a hand that she shakes firmly, and then repeats the process with Darcy.

They´re light chatters, but charmingly interesting. Jane has a thousand theories she keeps debating with them all, and Darcy´s wit is pretty refreshing, even if she asks them to tone down the technical stuff lest she starts drowning them in political babble. He decides he likes the girls, he´ll introduce them to his friends sometime.

However, he knows what Bruce wants to ask, and when Darcy takes her leave (apparently she has some sort of test tomorrow and she needs to get home and go through her not-studying-routine), Jane heads for the bar to ask for another drink, and Eric makes a bathroom run, he turns to him.

"Spit it out before it burns you."

"How did it go?" Bruce asks immediately. Tony grins because of how easily he can read his friend, and then shrugs.

"It was pretty well. He´s not what you would call a typical Omega. He´s all right."

"Good. The sooner you get it in here" He pokes his temple with two fingers. "That there´s nothing special about him, the sooner you can get over it."

"There´s nothing to get over, Brucie." Tony reminds him, annoyed. His friend rolls his eyes but goes back to his drink. Tony huffs and does the same.

There´s _nothing_ to get over.

\--

"Clint told me he saw you talking to Tony yesterday?" Thor asks in what he hopes is polite interest and not blatant accusation. Loki turns in his seat to examine him.

"He saw well. He came looking for me."

"What for?"

"To ask me out."

Thor twists the wheel abruptly and brings the car to a halt at the shoulder.

"He did what?" He demands. Loki grins back.

"He asked me out." His brother repeats, taking in his desperation with apparent delight. It only lasts for a second, though, before the smirk vanishes and he shrugs. "He´s got this stupid idea that we should become friends so that we´re not awkward around each other." He explains.

"... Is that a smart move, Loki?"

"It does make sense, that in getting to know each other with no other intent than establishing a friendship we get to forget any other idea we might have had about the other."

Thor thinks he´ll actually get a headache because of the effort to avoid rolling his eyes. Loki and his evasive bullshit.

"Why are you doing this to yourself?"

"Doing _what_ to myself?" He snaps back. "Keep driving or we´re going to be late."

Thor sighs and pulls off again. When they find a spot at the parking lot Loki practically sprints off the car, and Thor lets him. He catches a glimpse of his back disappearing behind a door and he keeps going his way. It´s just luck what brings his friend into his path.

"Hey Steve."

The other stops and takes a peek at him from over the canvases stacked on his arms.

"Oh, hey Thor." Steve smiles and lets Thor take half of the canvases from him. "Thanks. They voted me class carrier because everyone else can carry three at the most."

"Where are you taking them?"

"The storage room. Have you got the time?"

"We have free leave to work on our projects."

"Great, how´s the playground coming along?"

"Finished the swing set yesterday. It´s awesome. It has an armored horse swing." He answers. He´d been so proud of his horse swing that he´d had to restrain himself to avoid trying it himself. On an unrelated note, he´d also had to repair a broken horse leg and get another length of rope. "I´m starting the main playhouse today."

"Will it be awesome?"

"It´s a castle. You tell me." He beams and makes Steve laugh.

"So it´ll be ready just in time, huh? In case Loki..."

"Let´s not, Steve." Thor cuts him and feels himself deflate. He´s not in the mood to talk about Loki. Least of all about the engagement with him.

"Sorry."

Thor shakes his head, but a thought has returned to his mind.

"Now that you mention Loki, he told me he went out with Tony yesterday." He blurts out before he can stop himself. Much to his surprise, Steve´s smile comes back.

"Yeah, Tony told me."

"He... Told you?"

"Yeah, they got coffee or something. He went for beer with Bruce right after."

"Oh." It´s all that comes to his mind... Perhaps he was overreacting after all. "It´s nice they get along."

"I figured they would, from all you´ve told me about Loki." He stops at a door marked as their destination. "Here, let me open it."

The room is crammed in rolled up papers, cans of paint and brushes and half-finished wooden sculptures, but they find an empty table to place their canvases and run off before they suffocate with the mix of dust and paint smell.

"I´ll go get on with my stuff." Thor says as goodbye.

"Keep it as awesome as possible, ok?" Steve beams back as he locks the room´s door again. "Maybe someday my kids will play in there."

"I´ll make you a better one then!" Thor exclaims back from the end of the hallway, and he allows himself a smile at the thought.

\--

When Loki walks into the rehearsal room it´s already packed. There are a bunch of prostitute extras practicing their choreography, the Javert guy seems to have taken his role to heart, and can be heard trying different versions of `And I´m Javert´, and Eris is on a corner playing Marius while Anansi sings back Cosette´s lines in the highest voice he can reach. It´s actually pretty good.

He sits by himself and tries to focus on his script, but as soon as Anansi and Eris get bored of destroying each other´s characters he stops pretending to be drunk and calls his friend over.

"What´s up? I..."

He goes straight to the point, hating himself because he _shouldn´t be so fucking anxious._

"I went out with him yesterday."

Anansi shuts his mouth so fast Loki fears for his tongue, and then opens it again.

"Does he give good head? He looks like he gives good head."

Loki kicks his foot, but it lacks intent and they both know it.

"I didn´t sleep with him."

"What? Why not? What did you do then?" Anansi looks bewildered, and Loki understands; were their situations reversed, he´d be asking the very same questions.

"Went for coffee. Talked." He pretends to check his script again. "Just as friends."

He can feel his friend´s big brown eyes digging into his skull, but he doesn´t turn until he sees him shrugging out the corner of his eye.

"Well, you should take what you can get."

"Should I? I could be fucking my Enjolras right now, Anansi."

"But you´re not. Which means you don´t want to."

"Not really. His girlfriend scares me."

"Of course she does, Kali´s a freaking headcase. But that´s not my point, my point is..."

"I know your point."

"Then what are you waiting for?!"

"Anansi there´s no case. I´m getting married in _months_. As soon as I finish here. I _have_ to be pregnant by the end of the year."

"You´re not getting married and we both know it. You´re holding back because your brother told you to. Text him! Go out with him! Just as `friends´ " he marks the quotation marks with his fingers. "Then you go back home and jerk off in his honor, you´ll eventually get tired of it and go after someone not off limits."

He wants to say no, to tell him he´s not going to fall that low, but Anansi is already thrusting his hand down his pocket and before he knows it he´s holding his phone.

"Now what did you say lover boy´s name was?"

"Tony." He answers instead of trying to retrieve his phone. However, it gets dropped on his lap a second later and when he checks it, there´s already a new sent text.

_`Free today? I get out at 4´_

He wants to punch himself. He´s never, ever in his whole life, been the one to call first. Least of all so soon. Just as he´s stuffing the phone into his pocket again, there´s the sound of an incoming message, and Anansi rips it from his grasp.

"I´m done after 3.30. How do you feel about shawarma?" He reads out loud, and looks sideways at him. "Do you like shawarma?"

"Hate it."

"Good... Enough... meet you... At the parking lot." He texts back, and this time Loki does smile. His friends are few and they´re all assholes. But they´re the best.

-

He forces the shawarma down and it´s surprisingly not that bad.

"How did you find this place?" He asks, surprised and wiping grease stains from his lips. He´s not one to stop by obscure food stands and Tony doesn´t look the type either.

"Dunno. Apparently this was the closest think Jarvis could find to what I asked for after three days working down in the lab."

"What were your demands? Greasy, meaty and easy to hold? He could´ve sent you to a burrito stand."

"Jarvis disapproves of burritos."

"Why did you spend three days down in a lab?"

"Well..."

"What?"

Tony stares at him for a bit too long.

"You´ve never really planned to kill anyone, have you?"

Loki laughs. "Not anyone you know."

Five minutes later they´re speeding down the street in his car and pulling up behind his house to enter straight into the garage.

"It´s a sex slave, isn´t it? I´ve always wanted a sex slave." Loki mutters as Tony leads him down a set of stairs behind a locked door.

"Trust me, it´s much better." He assures him as he turns a key on yet another lock.

Loki walks in after him and immediately jumps back because a _fucking robot arm_ just swung an inch from his face.

"Ah, don´t mind Dummy, he´s inoffensive. Butterfingers, get our guest a drin... No, forget it, I´ll get it myself." He slaps a second robot carelessly as he makes his way through the lab and crouches to retrieve two beers from a mini-bar fridge. "Welcome to my humble abode."

Loki sweeps a look over the place. He can´t recognize half of the things lying around, most of which look like unfinished projects, and there are a couple of half-mounted cars at the back. What he does recognize is the top-notch equipment stacked on work tables and hanging of walls and he might not know much about mechanics, but this place screams `expensive´ with a fucking megaphone.

"... Modest." He clears his throat. "So? Will you show me this invention of yours?"

He does.

It´s amazing.

He lets himself be lead to an empty corner of the workshop and faces a wall with a bulls-eye messily painted on. He notices the shiny metal piece only after Tony has lifted his arm to chest level and is targeting the wall.

"... Is this thing what I think it is?" He asks, a delighted smile in his face, and Tony just nods before a blast comes out of his palm and tears a dent in the wall; nothing to deep, but a dent still.

"Worth three days burrowed down here, huh?"

"Take it off. Take it off now!"

After a few seconds of coaxing, he lets him try the metal gauntlet on, and shows him how to position his arm so that he doesn´t burn his foot off.

"It´s got one hell of a kick, so watch ou-hey!" he jumps aside as a second blast hits the wall.

Loki turns to him, and he can´t control his grin.

"You have to be kidding me." Is the only thing he manages at first. He can feel the adrenaline running through his veins, his hand is still shaking, and his breathing is labored. He feels as if he either just finished running a marathon or had the most exciting session of sex in the History of Sex. "I thought you weren´t so big on making weapons?" He recovers enough to ask.

"Well, it´s not supposed to be a weapon." Tony smiles cautiously and recovers the gauntlet.

"Then what´s it for?"

"It's just a propeller. I´m building a second one." He lets out, as if it´s something anyone could do on their day off. "And then I might complete the look with a nice pair of boots."

Loki feels another joust of excitement as the image forms in his mind.

Flying.

If he hadn´t wanted to kiss the man the moment he scribbled his number on his sandwich wrapper, then he´d surely have wanted to kiss him right now.

He doesn´t, of course. He keeps his hands fisted tight in his t-shirt and keeps listening to the brilliant, brilliant ranting coming out of his mouth.

\--

"What are you doing here?" He asks, looking up at the tallest figure. Loki´s accompanied by a lean, dark-skinned man with wiry limbs and fingers, whose spider tattoo gives away his identity. "You must be Anansi."

"The one and only." The guy smiles and gives him a mock bow. "Glad to finally meet you Tony boy."

Tony smile at the guy´s easygoing attitude and the way Loki rolls his eyes. He hasn´t seen him since he showed him the propeller two days ago, and weirdly enough that feels like it´s been weeks.

"So? What brings you Dicaprios to the Land of Ooo?"

"We were looking for a teacher, they told us he usually has lunch here with some others, but we´re done now."

"So you´ve got to go back?" He asks, a bit disappointed. The easy banter he´s found with Loki is too comfortable an interaction to let go, even just once. "Stay for a bit."

"Well, I guess..." Loki begins, but Anansi cuts his sentence in half.

"Costume fitting sweetheart."

"... I guess we can´t stay."

"Costumes? For the play? Can I watch?" And yes, he´s a bit too interested, but he likes costumes and if he gets a chance to tease Loki about whatever he´s going to wear then what could be better?

Loki shrugs.

"I don´t think the seamstress will have anything against it."

"Walk with us, Tony boy."

Tony takes a moment to poke his head into the room he just came out of and yell a hurried `I´ll be back later Brucie´ before closing the door and following the other two, who are already at the end of the hall.

"Aren´t you supposed to be doing something?" Loki asks him as soon as he´s close enough.

"I´m halfway done with my dissertation, I can take one little break."

Loki smiles. "I get the feeling you use that excuse much more often than you should." He adds. "What´s the dissertation about?"

"The importance and benefits of artificial intelligence."

"Still working on your virtual butler?"

"It can call for pizza and play music for me now."

"Ah, but can it tap dance?"

"Don´t make me build a functional robot just to shut you up." He slaps his shoulder playfully. For a moment he feels bad for leaving Anansi out like that, but when he looks the guy´s eyes are glued to his phone´s screen. He shrugs internally. "Are you ready for the play then?"

"Well I am, for the most part. I don´t have that many lines."

"Does that mean I won't get to hear you sing?"

Loki arches an eyebrow at the phrasing and he feels himself sort of blushing, but he´s Tony Stark and he doesn´t get embarrassed, so he just keeps looking questioningly.

"You will, actually. A couple of times at least."

"Nice." He looks forward to where the Arts building is already visible in the distance. "My mother loved theater. She took me to children plays all the time." He aims for nonchalant, but his voice takes the heavy taint it always has when he remembers her, and he curses himself for it.

He can feel Loki´s eyes on the side of his face and there´s a minute of uncomfortable silence as Anansi´s footsteps keep on and theirs stop.

"Where is she now?" Loki asks, and his voice is almost soft.

"She died when I was twelve." He answers and shrugs like he always does. It somehow never works with those he wants it to work the most.

When he tried it with Bruce, he stayed silent for a second and then made him tea. With Clint it had gotten him an in-promptu movie night with his friend forcing him to shovel food into his mouth. Thor had no use for discretion and had told him to stop acting like he didn´t care or he´d keep hurting himself, and then proceeded to get him roaring drunk. Pepper had gifted him their first kiss after hearing it. Steve, a crushing hug and a night so caring and peaceful it´d take him a lot to forget, if he ever did. He´d never done it with Rhodey; Rhodey had been there from the start, climbing through his window when even Jarvis wasn´t allowed through the door, building a pillow fortress and then hiding inside with him even though he had nothing to hide from at all.

He wonders the reaction he´ll get this time, from Loki of all people.

"When we were kids my dad used to take Thor and me to watch wrestling matches. I think he hoped we´d like it as much as he does, but at least in my case the only thing I got was a healthy distaste for both bulky males and spandex."

"... Huh?" He looks at him, but Loki keeps staring back in a way that gives him no option but to replay the dialog in his mind until he understands it. "I bet many bulky guys must hold a grudge against your dad, then."

"Them and those who´ve ever wanted to see me in skin tight clothes." He shrugs, and keeps staring like he can see through him. Tony´s a bit dazed because of course it didn´t work, but for the first time no one´s offering a shoulder to cry on. Loki knows he´s bluffing, of course he does if the way he keeps staring is taken into account, but by the look of him he´s letting him walk free for the time being.

"Is your costume fitting mandatory?" He thinks he only asks in his mind but Loki smirks and he knows he said it out loud.

"It is."

"Ah... Well then let´s-" But Loki turns on the spot to face Anansi that´s watching them from afar and is apparently a little impatient. He waves him away with a gesture and Tony thinks Anansi laughs before turning his back to them, but he can´t be sure.

"What do you suggest?"

"I thought you said it was mandatory."

"Your point?" And his mischievous smile is so contagious he can´t really do anything but return it.

-

They don´t meet for nearly a week after that, and none of them really plans it the next time, it just sort of... Happens.

Tony´s just minding his own business, browsing through Home Depot´s aisles for a new set of basic tools (sometimes that's just all you need) when he spots the brothers arguing in the paint section.

"Paint it golden."

"But I´d like it more in silver..."

"Then why are you asking me? It´s going to suck in silver but do whatever the fuck you want."

He keeps silent as he approaches them.

"It won´t suck in silver." Thor mutters, offended. "At least it´s better than green."

"What´s wrong with green?" Loki asks, crossing his arms in front of his green-clad chest and glaring dangerously at his brother. Tony grins because he could hardly have found a better opening, and steals the words out of Thor´s mouth.

"It´s not a creative color, for one."

The brothers flinch away and turn to face him.

"Tony! What are you doing here?"

"Excuse me, I don´t recall anyone asking for your opinion."

He smiles at their forms of greeting, and addresses Loki first.

"It was an open question, everybody knows what´s wrong with green." And then he turns to Thor. "I´m looking for tools. I just need the basic stuff so this was as good a place as any." He explains. "What are you painting?"

"My final project." Thor grins, pulling out a set of pictures of a wood and metal playground in the shape of a castle.

"It´s pretty awesome." Tony admits with an arched eyebrow, and Thor turns to Loki with a shit eating grin. "Come on, you don´t like it?! What´s wrong with you?!" He demands, personally offended in behalf of the thing.

"A pirate ship would´ve been much more original."

"Don´t listen to him, pal."

"No one does anyways." Loki complains and drops two metallic palettes into Tony´s grip. "He´s going to ruin it even more with his ugly shade of silver."

"... I´m afraid I have to side with Captain Drama here..." Tony agrees after studying the palettes for a moment. "Whatever, I´ve got to get going, I have to meet with Steve. I´ll see you guys later and you can show me the real thing Thor."

"Sure, although I´m still painting it silver." Thor declares stubbornly and Loki rolls his eyes.

"Did you ever get to your costume fitting, Cosette?" He asks. Thor looks confused, but Loki smiles.

"You´re going to be pretty disappointed when you buy a ticket to try and blackmail me and find out halfway through the play that I´m not the one wearing the frilly dress."

"No take-backs." He smiles back and adds. "Good luck with that, you both." before leaving.

He´s texting even before he reaches the tools aisle.

_`You would make a good Cosette, though´_ He forces himself not to imagine it, but that doesn't mean he can acknowledge it, right? 

And the response is equally fast.

_`I´m too tall for the dresses, trust me, they´ve tried.´_ And ok, now he is imagining it, but it's less a picture of smooth skin draped in dark silk and lace and more a disgruntled Loki pulling on a skirt so that it goes below his knees. He's smiling before he notices. 

\--

"So... It´s true."

Loki tears his gaze from his phone´s screen at the sound of Thor´s voice and finds himself being scrutinized.

"What´s true?" He asks, before he catches up and his expression sours. "Oh, I see. You did think I spent my time spreading my legs and rolling on my back for him."

Thor sighs. "Don´t be like that..."

"So you see, I am capable of sustaining a 'normal' friendship."

"But you still like him."

"So what if I do?" Loki snaps back. "I do, ok? I want him. For a day or two, maybe even for a whole week. I don´t know, and I´m holding back because you expressly asked me to, so give me some credit here, ok?" He drops the palettes on the paint counter and stomps away.

He´s fuming by the time he gets to the bus stop; he´d have Tony wrapped around his little finger in five seconds if it weren´t for Thor, ready to use and move on to the next one once he gets bored, he totally would.

Besides, what good is the so-called boyfriend if he´s never there anyways?

He texts Anansi.

_`I need to get drunk.´_

And his friend delivers.

\--

Thor gets the golden paint in the end.

It´s sort of an apology but it doesn´t really matter because by the time Loki finally comes back home it´s already too dark outside and he´s much too drunk to notice the drying slide in their front yard.

After a silent quarrel with himself he decides he does want to formally apologize, and sets to wait on the lobby on the second floor. He winces when Loki slams the front door too hard...

"I´ve told you not to be out this late."

... And he winces ten times harder when he recognizes his father´s voice because oh, there are a thousand things that can and will go wrong between his father and drunk brother.

"Please, no one´s going to rape me for being out at ten forty." Loki answers and he´s amazingly good at keeping the slur off his voice.

"You don´t know that."

"Well, no one _should_ rape me for being out at ten forty."

"No one should rape you under any circumstance, but if there´s something rapists aren´t particularly good at it´s sticking to what´s correct." His father answers in a calm, fond tone. "So don´t be out late by yourself, please."

"You wouldn´t tell Thor that." There is a bit of slur this time.

"Of course I would! Thor has a frightening tendency to get in trouble when he´s by himself."

"Is my mother awake?"

"I don´t think so."

"I want to talk to her."

"You can talk to me."

Thor can´t help it anymore. He leans over the staircase´s handrail and looks down. His father is sitting on his favorite couch at the living room, the one that´s old and worn down and everyone agrees clashes with the style of the rest of the house AND has things growing inside of it, but no one really wants to throw away. There´s a closed book on the couch´s arm and his father´s face is turned to Loki. The later remains at the door, and even from this far Thor can see the rosiness in his cheeks, which means his father must be smelling like three different kinds of alcohol right now.

"There´s no case." Loki shrugs at last.

"... Is it about the wedding?" His father asks cautiously, and Loki nods slowly. "What is it?"

"It´s too late, dad."

"Too late for what, Loki?"

Loki shrugs again and for a second he´s six years old again, standing on Thor´s bedroom because he´s afraid of thunderstorms and he doesn´t want anyone to know he´s scared because he thinks they'll leave him again.

"I don´t want to do it."

His father sighs. "I know you don´t want to, son, but..."

"But if you die all I own is a cardboard box, I know." Loki´s voice breaks a bit. Thor attributes it to the alcohol because Loki hates even tearing up in front of their father. "She didn´t have to disown me." He adds so low that Thor has trouble understanding at first.

Just like that, his father stands off the couch and steps closer to Loki. Not touching him, or making any move to reach him. Just close.

"Farbauti is a woman with great ambition and little mother inside her. Not that there's anything wrong in those traits but they can be a bit harmful when combined. Some people are like that, they value luxury much more than it´s worth. I don´t think you need that much money, but I don´t want you to struggle because you don´t have it. If it were my choice you´d inherit much more than what you´ll get from the marriage agreement, but this is literally the most I can do." He rubs his forehead. " In fact, I don´t want you to struggle at all. But I´m old and I´m starting to get that I´m not going to last forever. I just want you to be safe."

"I know." Loki whispers. "I know." And it´s so sudden Thor can see the surprise in his father´s face, when Loki leans in to hug him for barely a second before letting go and taking the stairs two steps at a time with all the grace his drunken self can muster. It´s all Thor can do to hide in the linens closet until he hears Loki´s bedroom door closing and his father´s steps taking him to his own bedroom.

He waits a few minutes before he works up the courage to knock on Loki's door, and then some more before he dares pushing it open himself.

Loki´s sitting at the windowsill, hugging his knees and staring at something outside.

"I´m sorry." He starts. Loki doesn´t move, doesn´t do anything. "I overreacted, I..." His tongue tangles on itself, his throat closes and he forces a sigh through. "I should´ve trusted you."

Loki finally turns and his eyes focus on his, but there´s something off about them; probably the booze, he decides.

"Close your eyes."

Thor obeys, eager to receive a punch if that´s what it´ll take to be forgiven, but suddenly there are lips on his own and everything´s hot and wet and _wrong_.

He pushes Loki away and wipes a hand across his mouth, breathing heavily.

"What the hell was that?!"

Loki chuckles and sits back on the windowsill, letting his head rest against the glass.

"A taste of our bright, bright future."

"I... Listen we both hate this, but..." He tries, but his brother is already dozing off. He fights down another sigh and picks him up to drop him on his bed. He flees the room right after, still with the foreign taste on his tongue that just makes him feel like everything he knows is broken.

\--

He recognizes the footsteps that come after the door to the library cubicle opens and closes, and he has the fleeting thought that he´s lucky he´s alone (It took a lot of encouraging, but Bruce finally got the guts to randomly visit Darcy in her side of the campus and chat her up for a while.) before he remembers he´s not doing anything bad and has no reasons to feel guilty.

Loki sits on Bruce´s empty chair and pushes his laptop away.

"Hey you." He greets, but Loki doesn´t answer. He looks up from his laptop´s screen after a moment of silence and finds him staring back with such intensity he´s surprised he didn´t feel it sooner. "Are you ok?" Silence. "No you´re not... Let´s see... Did you fight with your broth-"

He stops when Loki leans in and closes the distance between them, catching his lips mid-sentence. They´re thinner than Steve´s and _he shouldn´t be doing this_ but somehow his hand has found its way to the back of Loki´s neck and his hair tickles his nose and everything´s _different_.

He parts their mouths, and stares into Loki´s eyes as he tries to control his breathing.

"I warned you. I told you this wouldn´t work." Loki says and it´s as if he´s blaming him and really, Tony should be the one blaming here.

It´s all Loki´s fault.

He´s the one who looks like he doesn't care about anything but can speak for hours about his stupid favorite movie. He´s the one whose stupid face lit up when he used his propeller and who heard everything he explained after about it and told him he was crazy while he laughed and those stupid dimples formed on his cheeks. He´s the one that somehow found that obscure movie based on his mom´s favorite play and dropped it through his car window with that stupid smug smile. He´s the one that drinks his stupid coffee with five sugars and then asks him if he's going to eat the strawberry that came with his cake. He´s the one that texted him two days ago at three in the morning saying he was lucky at least his mother had loved him and then didn´t pick up his worried calls. He´s the one that always wears something green and watches everyone as if he knows much more than he should and that smirks a lot but smiles so little and laughs even less.

It´s his fault.

"Let´s go somewhere else." He proposes, and he barely remembers to gather his own stuff and leave the key to the cubicle with the librarian for Bruce.

He hates himself when he climbs into his car with Loki, but he knows he´d hate himself a lot more if he hadn´t done it.


	4. Hiding my heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything has to come to an end, sometime.

**4**

**Hiding my heart**

The movie is frankly and terribly boring, but then again that´s why they chose it in the first place. They´re holding hands in the dark and Loki feels like a god damned eight grader on his first date but he can´t bring himself to let go. Anansi will never let him live it down... He´s just started with this line of thought when a couple of warm lips graze the spot behind his ear, and he smiles.

"It´s not even fifteen minutes in..."

"Do you honestly think it´s going to suck less?" Tony whispers against the skin of his neck.

"It was worth a shot." He whispers back, turning to kiss him full on the mouth. His lips are chapped, his stubble tickles his cheeks and his hand is trailing down his nape to trace a random pattern across his back. They separate half an hour later when something gets blown up on screen, but none have any idea of what it was or why it got destroyed (not that they care either way) so they go back to their business.

Needless to say they´re pretty satisfied with their choice of movie when they come out.

"I´ll give you a ride." Tony smiles, but then there´s music coming from his pocket and out comes the cell phone Loki has learned to hate. Tony´s smile melts as he reads what´s on the screen, and he looks back up looking like he just ran over a child. "I have to go."

Loki feels like he swallowed a bucket of fast-drying concrete, but he forces himself to look indifferent. He knew from the start what he had gotten into.

"There´s a bus stop right outside. I´ll call you lat-"

"Tomorrow. I... We have reservations at his favorite restaurant." Tony interrupts him, and then he sighs. "Next time I-"

"That´s fine. Call me when you´re free, then."

"Text me when you get home?"

"Sure."

They stand in front of each other in silence for a couple of minutes, until Tony edges a bit closer and Loki leans down to let him kiss his lips first and his cheek after.

The text from his mother comes in just as he reaches the deserted bus stop.

_`Will you make it in time for dinner?´_

_`Probably not. Save me a plate?´_

_`Do you want me to send your father to pick you up?´_

The idea makes him smile, he pictures them both trapped in an awkward, loaded silence, with his father trying to ignore how he looks like someone tried to eat him mouth first.

_´I´m already on the bus.´_

He makes it home by nine thirty, which is thankfully early enough to avoid his father´s speech, and shouts a lazy "I´m home" as he slips into the lobby's bathroom.

He makes sure his lips look less red now, and fixes his hair as much as he can. Just to be sure, he pulls out a lip balm and smears it on.

"I can get your make-up for you if you want. Maybe the theater stuff is thick enough to cover the hickeys."

He drops the balm on the sink and hops sideway to find his mother standing at the bathroom door with crossed arms and a knowing smile.

"Hickeys?" He stutters out. His mother rolls his eyes and taps her own nape with a finger. Loki curses under his breath.

"This is the third time this week, Loki."

"Have you been keeping track?"

"I´m your mother, the track keeps itself." She smiles again. Loki feels his stomach twist and curl on itself and he takes a decision.

"... What would you d-"

"Where were you?" Thor´s voice interrupts him as he appears behind his mother and, just like that, his mood does a heel-face turn.

"What´s it to you?"

"Were you with Tony? Because Steve just told me he´s been going out alone a bit too oft-"

"Oh, no. No. You´re not going to blame me because your friend can´t even keep his boyfriend interested." Loki snaps. "I haven´t seen him in days and even if I had it hardly means he´s been cheating on him with me, but then again I´m always guilty, am I not?"

"Most of the times you are."

"Well not this one."

"Then where were you?"

Loki´s about to smash Thor´s nose with the toothbrush glass when his mother decides to intervene.

"I don´t think your brother has to answer to you, Thor. Not unless you´re worried this partner of his is harming him in some way."

"And what if he´s the one harm-"

"God, you actually believe it!" Loki shouts this time. "It´s Anansi´s cousin, you tremendous imbecile. I respected your rules, I found someone else, now leave me ALONE." And he pushes past him, leaving him behind with his mother.

His phone buzzes in his pocket barely a second after he´s closed his bedroom door after successfully smuggling his dinner plate from the kitchen.

_`Did you make it home allright?´_

He rolls his eyes as he types his answer, irritated.

_`No, I´m actually being stabbed to death by a gang of muggers, but they allowed me five seconds with my phone to send one last goodbye, thanks for asking.´_

_`What a considerate gang of muggers. Take a bath and go to sleep, sweetcheeks.´_

_`Enjoy your dinner.´_ He types, a bit spiteful. The next reply takes a bit more to come.

_`Have you got anything to do on tuesday?´_

_`Helping Anansi with a song for the play. I can do that on monday tho´_

_`Pick you up at five. Dress up nice.´_

_`You´re so predictable...´_

He drops the phone on his bedside table with the beginnings of a smile already tugging at his lips. That damned man.

-

"Will you keep a secret?" He asks the next day while he pushes the shopping cart through the cereal aisle. His mother drops a box of Lucky Charms in the cart and turns to meet his eyes.

"You _were_ with Tony, weren´t you?" Is all she asks, and suddenly Loki can´t hold her stare anymore. She sighs. "Why, Loki?"

He gives up, like he always does with her, and tells her everything, from their first meeting when neither of them knew who the other was, and how weird it felt to just want to get to know someone, with no other motives than, well... Getting to know them.

He tries to make her understand because he doesn´t believe he´ll be able to take it if she takes Thor´s side on this, so he holds nothing back. He tells her what he felt when he fired the propeller he had created all by himself and only out of that stupid curiosity of his. What he felt when Tony dropped a box of strawberries on his lap the morning after his drunken text and just _looked_ at him with sleep-deprived eyes and muttered a 'don't do that to me again, ok?'. The way his eyes drop to the ground and he smiles a little when he talks about his mother, and how he arranges everything in his workshop to his right because Dummy, You and Butterfingers always linger to his left and he always makes sure to leave unimportant little stuff for them to move around when he´s working. How he speaks of Pepper and Happy and Rhodey and how he wants to beat someone up because he can´t meet them, because he´s not supposed to be a thing.

The result is that an hour goes by and they´re still standing at the cereal aisle with just a box of Lucky Charms in the cart and they still have to get the rest of the groceries but Loki knows Frigga won´t move until they´re done and he loves her for it.

"I didn´t want this to happen." He offers, as an opening.

"Well, you did _choose_ to kiss him, and you knew what it would lead to."

"... Yes, I guess that was not the best course of action, but-" His mother shushes him with a gesture and he complies immediately because she looks positively _pissed_.

"People think the best course of action is that in which they will hurt no one but themselves." She starts, and takes a breath as if to calm herself. "Ideally, the best course of action would be that in which no one comes out hurt at all, but that just doesn´t happen. And society has brainwashed us into thinking we´re the ones that have to suffer for other´s commodity. Whether you want to admit it or not, you fell in love with someone, and that someone has a compromise with someone else. That was not your choice. Kissing him even though you knew he had that compromise was a choice, and that´s all there is to it. No better or worse course of action. Just choices you make and have to live with."

"... Is it my imagination or are you actually encouraging me?"

"I´m encouraging you to do what will make you happy. Keep this guy if you think he´ll be worth all the trouble you´ll get in for it. It´s not right that someone innocent has to come out hurt because of it, but if we place our own happiness lower in the scale than others´ s, then we´re the ones that come out losing and no one´s going to pick us up from the ground." She walks around the cart to place a firm hand on his shoulder. "Tony will have to choose at some point. If he chooses you, then you keep your head high against even your brother, because you deserve someone that´s willing to give up someone else for you. If he does choose Steve, then you keep your head higher and swallow your pride, because you were the one that walked into someone else´s playing field."

He chuckles, but the sad, choked sound that comes out of his mouth is definitively not what he was aiming for.

"I´ve always known I´m a horrible person, but I never expected I´d feel bad for it." He jokes. Or at least he wants it to sound like a joke. Frigga smiles.

"That´s because you´re not a horrible person." She kisses his cheek and in moments like this Loki really wonders why the fact that the woman that birthed him left him behind takes such a toll on him.

He´s never been without a mother.

\--

She notices something´s different right away.

Loki seems different. Acts different.

He´s added another password to his phone and he apparently changes it every day. If that on itself was not enough, he´s taken to fidgeting whenever he has to remain sitting for more than five minutes and whenever his phone buzzes his hand is tense when it goes to retrieve it.

She won´t exactly admit it, but she´s worried. Since she knows just outright asking him without at least solid foundation is a waste of time, she sets to investigate.

There´s a rumor through the grapevine that he´s going out with someone related to one of his friends, another that he´s been seen going out of Headmaster Heimdall´s office a tad too often, and yet another one that someone saw him receive a wrapped up package from a shady guy with a hoodie at the parking lot.

She knows the first two are lies. The third one is actually true, but he was just picking up the package for her and it wasn´t drugs or a gun like everyone thought, but rather a harmless laser. Rather harmless looking, at least.

So people know nothing... Disappointing.

Still, she thinks they might be on to something, and that´s enough to shape a plan of attack.

"You´re not dating Anansi´s whatever."

Loki rolls his eyes and stays focused on his book.

"Cousin. And no, I´m not. Can we please leave it like that?"

"But you are seeing someone."

"I asked you nicely."

"Who is it?" She asks and, after Loki´s long silence. "You know I won´t tell if you ask me not to. I still we you one."

"I don´t particularly want to talk about it. Thor hates it and he´s been giving me hell at home."

Her mind is already listing possible subjects and the list is unsurprisingly short. Thor likes nearly everyone unless they outright strangle puppies or make sexist remarks.

"Is it Amora?"

"God, of course not."

"... Is it Malekith?"

"I hate the guy."

"That didn´t stop you with-"

"That was _one_ time, Natasha."

"Who is it then?"

"It doesn´t matter." He answers, and he seems like he means it and is not happy about it. "It´s going to blow up sooner than later, and when it happens you can go and tell everyone you saw it coming from day one."

"What´s so different about this girl? Or guy?"

"Guy."

"Whatever. Why are you dating him instead of just... Sleeping with him?"

He looks up at her with a resigned smile that borders on irritated.

"What was so different about Clint?"

She rises her eyebrows, impressed.

"Then why are you so convinced it´ll end badly?"

"Oh, I know things." He smiles ad raises to leave. Natasha watches his back get lost in the crowd and she somehow knows Loki is right this time.

\--

The street is completely empty and just turning the corner from Thor´s house. It could hardly be better (a part of his mind whispers it would definitively be better if he could park right in front of Thor´s door and not get his nose smashed, but thinking about it makes his throat ache so he ignores it) and he parks.

Loki looks just as he´s looked the entire night, with his white button-up and his black trousers and the single black chain necklace that falls over his collarbone and into his collar. Tony feels like he´s felt the entire night, frustrated and with fingers itchy to rip the shirt open.

"I can walk from here." Loki starts. Tony´s hand is just about to touch his shoulder when he notices his intentions. "Or we could do this as well, this is nice."

"You don´t even know what I´m going to do." Tony smiles and Loki grins wolfishly back.

"Then show me."

They kiss hard and desperate, Tony tangles his fingers in the chain and Loki´s shirt is suddenly half unbuttoned and his free hand slips in. Loki´s own fingers are gripping tight into his short hair while the other hand trails up his thigh.

Of course it couldn´t last.

Tony wants to throw his phone into a sewer when it blares out his by now not so favorite song and he feels Loki tense under his hands.

"Must be Steve." He says with a derisive sneer and motions for him to check it. Tony holds his stare for a moment and then, slowly, mutes the ring and drops it back in the ashtray.

"I´m a bit busy right now."

The phone rings some more before stopping altogether, but he barely notices the muffled buzzing with Loki kissing a trail down his neck.

"Let´s move to the backseat." Loki suggests with a voice that´s low and husky and that travels right to his crotch. Tony´s about to comply, when suddenly there´s a loud buzzing and the first notes to a song he doesn´t recognize.

Loki groans and pulls it out, but he freezes as soon as he reads the name on the screen.

"Don´t make a sound." He warns him before turning the car´s radio on and turning the volume up. "Hey." He says then, taking the phone to his ear. "What? Thor I can´t... ANANSI TURN THAT SHIT OFF." He yells and reaches to lower the volume. "THANK YOU." He yells again, apparently pissed in voice even though his face maintains a cold calm. "Now what do you... Yes, I´m with Anansi, we went clubbing and we´re in his car, why?" His hand clenches around Tony´s wrist. "No, I haven´t seen him... Yes, I´m going home now, I´ll be there in five minutes, tell mom... Yeah, bye."

He double-checks the call ended before turning to tony.

"Your boyfriend called Thor to ask if we had seen you. Apparently you´re not picking up your phone." He rolls his eyes. "Obviously, Thor thought we´d be together."

"Won´t he call Anansi now? You know, to check you weren´t lying?" Tony retrieves his phone and finds three missing calls. By his side, Loki shrugs.

"He´ll come up with something."

Tony rolls his eyes, amused, and takes the phone to his ear. Steve picks up on the first ring.

"Hey babe." He greets, sounding as apologetic as he can. "I saw you calls, what happen... Nah, I was driving and there was a police car next to me, I didn´t want to risk it... No, I was going home, but I can swing your way if you want me to... Fine, I´ll see you there."

"Did he sound angry?" Loki asks, buttoning his shirt again and fixing his hair in the rearview mirror.

"Worried." Tony shrugs and leans back on his seat. "Did you like the restaurant?"

"The food was good." Loki nods, and Tony grins.

"The company was better."

Loki rolls his eyes and punches his arm softly.

"I might visit your building on Thursday. Somehow I feel much more comfortable where there´s a lower risk to suddenly run into either your boyfriend or my brother."

"Why not tomorrow?"

"We have our last rehearsal." He opens the car´s door and steps outside. "However, if there´s a moment in which you think we might have a chance to finish _this_ , and it happens to be tomorrow, don´t hesitate to call." He smiles smugly and waves one last time before walking away.

Tony waits a few minutes after he disappears around the corner, fixes his own hair and shirt, and leaves.

-

He parks a few steps away from the white apartment tower, and Steve is waiting for him in the living room.

"Hey babe."

Steve looks up from a sketch and stands to kiss him.

"Hey. Where were you?" He asks when he notices Tony´s cologne and clothes.

"One of my dad´s associates is in town and we took him for dinner. I´m sorry I didn´t tell you, it was all a bit sudden." He knows Steve wouldn´t bother his father unless it was a real emergency.

"Oh. That´s fine, then. I was just worried, I even called Thor." Steve leads him to the couch and he sits.

"Did you? I haven´t seen Thor in a while. Why didn´t you call Brucie?" He asks, suspicions rising in his chest.

"Well, I figured since you´ve been hanging out with Loki a lot maybe he knew where you were, and I didn´t have his number." Steve answers calmly because of course he doesn´t know Tony´s freaking out because _he´s not supposed to notice those things_. "You just had dinner, then? Can I skip the coffee and all that?"

"Yep. Wait, skip the-" He replies, but his question is cut short because Steve is on him, pushing him down into the couch and kissing the life out of him. "Hey, hey! Where did that come from?" He asks when they break apart. Steve smirks down at him with a hand fisted tightly in his shirt.

"Did you think I wanted you to come here just to have a chat, Mr. Stark?" Is all he says before he dives in again, focusing on his neck this time. Tony grins, amused by his sincerity, and wraps his legs around Steve´s waist.

He wonders why would he ever risk this, but the question feels desperate, especially when a pair of green eyes and a sinful mouth grinning a mischievous smile are the first things to come to his mind. He forces himself to focus on the way Steve´s hand feel as it makes its way between his legs.

\--

Steve is not jealous. He trusts his boyfriend unconditionally (He trusts a lot of people actually, and for some reason it almost never backfires. Peggy used to say it was because he's that weird kind of good no one ever wants to hurt. Like killing a unicorn in Harry Potter, she had said. You don´t do it unless you´re desperate and even then you´re a jerk.), so he´s not worried.

When he kisses his neck, he _does_ smell that hint of something, though. Probably one of his father´s associates hugged him for a picture, it always happens. There´s a crease on his shirt, like someone gripped it too tight and one of the buttons is a bit pulled. His father, his mind provides. Howard has an ugly habit of drinking a bit too much during parties and he often needs something to cling to when returning to his car.

He´s not worried.

If he bites down on his neck a bit harder than usual and his grip on his leg is a bit too strong, then it´s just that he´s enthusiastic. 

Nothing more.

\--

"What are you doing here?" Clint asks in a low whisper.

Tony turns at the sound of his voice and after a moment of consideration, takes a seat next to him. "I heard there was a public rehearsal today." He shrugs.

"Since when do you care about theater?" He asks, arching an eyebrow because Tony has always let clear that he´ll take a book over a movie any day, but if you pay to actually _watch_ a book you should be able to see heads exploding without getting fake blood on your shirt.

"Since when do _you_?"

Clint shrugs. "I don´t. But we have to be here. It would be a jerk move on our part if we weren´t."

Tony´s eyes widen a bit there. "We?"

Natasha chooses that very moment to sit next to Clint and hand him his requested pack of gum.

"... What are you doing here?" She asks.

"What are you _both_ doing here?!" Tony asks back again, obviously irritated.

"Things are shaky with Thor, man. We couldn´t just... Not come." Clint takes it upon himself to explain.

"Did he invite you?" Nat intervenes again, and something in her voice is making Clint uneasy.

"Kind of. I texted him yesterday and he mentioned it." Tony´s answer comes hurried and muttered, which is on itself a bit weird. Out the corner of his eye he catches Nat raising her Epiphany Eyebrow and he frowns.

He´s just about to take her aside to ask her, but the lights go out and people are singing and fuck, Loki looks just too ridiculous in those pants to worry about anything else.

"Let me snap a picture." He begs after forcefully barging in the changing room. Loki´s character just died, which means they can skip the rest of the play behind the scenes with him. Loki flips him in the mirror, but his eyes drift to Tony and he smiles a bit.

"Is it procrastinating time yet?" He asks. Tony pretends to be offended.

"I´ll have you know my dissertation is being proofread for the last time as we speak. I´m free to roam the campus to my every whim."

"... Does that mean you didn´t do that before?" He turns to face Clint. "Take your stupid picture."

"I love you." Clint shoves his phone into Nat´s hands and holds an elaborate pose gesturing to Loki´s pants until the shooter sound dies. "You should graduate with those"

"You´re an idiot."

"No, seriously. Do it and I´ll attend your wedding in a gown of your choice." He dares, and he laughs when Nat slaps the back of his head while Loki makes a show of evaluating one of the Cosette dresses.

"He´d probably make you show up completely naked except for a top hat." Tony quips in, and Loki shakes his head next to him.

"That lovely purple underwear I gave you last Christmas would look much better."

Clint frowns, remembering the damned thing.

"Fuck you, I burned those."

"No you didn´t." Loki smirks and looks pointedly at Nat. He turns to glare at her, but of course she´s suddenly very interested in something at the ceiling. He´ll definitively burn them now.

"Why did you give him underwear?" Tony asks, amused. Loki shrugs.

"Mock secret Santa."

"What did she give you?"

"You don´t want to know." Loki answers over Clint´s chuckle, and there´s a light blush on his cheeks and an embarrassed smile on his face. There´s a companionable silence while Nat inspects some prop guns and Clint sniffs at Loki´s prop bottle because he´s fairly sure he definitively sneaked some real alcohol in there. When he turns to them again, Loki´s eyes are fixed on Tony´s neck and he´s frowning lightly. Tony seems to feel the intensity of the stare because he suddenly returns it.

"Good night, I presume?" Loki asks in a monotone voice.

Clint goes to look and oh surprise, there´s a clear trail of lovebites running up and down Tony´s neck.

"Fuck, did Steve do that to you? Did he catch you flirting with a waitress or what?" He laughs and he waits for Tony to grin back and make a smug remark, but much to his surprise it doesn´t come. Actually, Tony doesn´t even answer. Instead, he tightens his lips and swallows, and looks just about to speak again when Anansi comes out of nowhere and grins at them.

"Hey Tony boy. Hey Nat. Barty." He greets with a voice hoarse from singing.

Clint rolls his eyes and doesn´t answer. He just wraps an arm around Nat´s (he´s the only one allowed to call her Nat, fuck) waist and pulls her against him.

"I like how you die, baby doll, you should do it more often." He stretches to wrap an arm around Loki and shakes him roughly.

"That should definitively not be a compliment." Tony speaks at last with a dubious smile.

"Well I don´t hear _you_ complimenting anything, so it was my job."

"... He makes the pants look less ugly?" He tries. Loki arches an eyebrow at him, and Tony shrugs back, not meeting his eyes, but Anansi laughs.

"And that´s a feat on itself. Hey Thor." Anansi makes them all turn when he addresses the newcomer, who´s pushing his way to them through a sea of bulky-dressed extras.

"I don´t recall inviting you." Loki says with a voice that could´ve frozen a small lake had it been a few degrees colder. Thor doesn´t even flinch.

"It´s a public rehearsal. The flyers are everywhere and Steve and I wanted to check it out."

Clint feels the mood tense and he looks at Nat in question. She´s looking straight at Loki but when he follows her eyes and searches his face for a hint he´s just there, standing between Anansi and Tony wearing an expression that makes the wall behind him look too emotive.

"Hey babe." Tony greets as Steve appears next to Thor, and crosses the tight circle to give him a peck on the lips. "What brings you here?"

"I felt like sketching and Thor suggested the rehearsal. Good for practicing clothes. What brings you here?" Steve answers, smiling in that warm way of his.

"Well, Loki told me not to come so I obviously did."

"And why was that?" He asks Loki, who composes an irritated smile of his own.

"I´ve never been especially fond of my singing voice." And then he turns to Anansi. "Shouldn´t you be getting married now?"

"Probably. Your last song comes right after, doesn´t it?" He answers, and Clint doesn´t particularly like the way he looks Steve up and down, but he´s gone five seconds later with Loki in tow.

Steve drags Tony back to the seats saying something about wanting to sketch Cosette´s wedding dress and they´re left alone with Thor, who Nat is scanning over with one of her evaluating stares.

"I take it you two are still on bad terms?" Clint asks, but it´s more of an affirmation. If they had made up he could´ve skipped the two-hours long rehearsal of the play he´s going to watch that very weekend.

Thor shrugs and he looks tired.

"I might be thinking too hard but I´d rather be sure."

"... Sure about what?" Clint asks, although bits and pieces of some particular events in the last month are coming back to him and his stomach is beginning to sink with a bad feeling.

Thor looks at him strangely, as if he doesn´t believe him.

"Maybe I _am_ thinking too hard." He mutters to himself. "I... Tell Loki I went home, please." He says before leaving.

Slowly, very slowly, Clint turns to Nat.

"Is this about what I think it is?"

\--

_"Did you see how he looked at you?"_

_"He doesn´t know."_

_"Then what´s with the bite marks?"_

_"... He_ doesn´t _know."_

_"I say he knows something."_

_"Is that supposed to be encouraging?"_

_"Baby doll, you don´t mark someone when you´re dead sure they´re yours. I´d say lover boy has been growing a bit too apart for his boy´s liking."_

_"Get to the point Anansi."_

_"You know my point, you just want to hear it from me, don´t you?"_

_"You know me."_

_"Maybe you_ do _have a chance on this."_

Loki remembers his conversation with a smile on his face as he walks home.

He´s just a street away, at nearly the same place they were yesterday night when he notices the red sport car coming his way and slowing down. His smile widens.

The car stops next to him and the glass slides down.

"Get in?" Tony asks.

Loki stops walking, but doesn´t acknowledge him. He doesn´t want it to be _that_ easy.

"I... You were really good today. Now I don´t regret having bought a ticket."

That´s a pleasant surprise. For all he joked about the dress and the singing, he never imagined Tony would actually take the time to be there. Of course the revelation came with the bitter knowledge that _of course_ he would take his boyfriend along because it would be a tad suspicious if he went on his own, but he takes what he can get and ignores the rest. One step at a time, he thinks.

By the time he finishes thinking this, Tony´s already getting desperate.

"I didn´t know Steve would be there? Come here, sweetcheeks."

"I´d rather like it if you didn´t call me that." He says, and he makes his voice as cold as he can. He takes a step forward like he plans on resuming his way and then the car´s engine is turned off and Tony´s standing right in front of him. "You left the door open." He points out, uninterested this time.

"Look, I´m sorry. I know I shouldn´t have..."

"Oh, but you had all the right." Loki interrupts him. "You had to get some tail, after all. I´m happy you found it."

"Don´t be like that. What did you want me to do? `I´m sorry Steve but I don´t think it´s fair I get to have sex with you on Loki´s night´? Come on!"

"I couldn´t care less." He takes another step forward, this time angled to walk around Tony, but he gets on his way yet again.

"Of course you care. You care and it´s fair and all, and I shouldn´t have gone to see you with the stupid marks still there but I _wanted_ to see you, ok?" He fists a hand in the fabric of his shirt and pulls hard. "Give me a fucking break here, would you? Steve is amazing and I´m sure even you´d get to like him if you took the time to know him, and I´m a complete asshole for doing this to him but I´m _here_. With _you_."

"That´s what I don´t get. Why are you here, if Steve is so amazing and perfect and you love him so much?" Loki raises to his full height and looks down at Tony, but then the fist on his shirt pulls even harder and there´s a hand at his nape that´s pulling him in for a crushing, brutal kiss. It´s bruising and hurried and demanding and he gives up into it soon enough because Anansi´s theory might be correct but he´s not going to risk it by playing too hard to get when he feels so embarrassingly needy and having Tony´s scent shoved into his face is definitively not helping.

Tony bites and pulls slightly at his lower lip when they finally part but he doesn´t let go of neither his nape nor his shirt.

"To be honest, I´m pretty sure I´m here because you hexed me, because you are the worst-" He kisses him again, shorter this time. " -and most annoying piece of shit I´ve ever met."

"I´d normally say flattery will get you nowhere, but in your case it might actually get you at least into the backseat of the car." Loki smiles against his lips and feels the fisted hand on his chest relax.

"I have a better idea." Tony takes a step back and smiles up at him. "Let´s go to my house. There´s an actual bed in there in which you might fit if we´re really lucky."

Loki laughs and is about to tell him he´s never particularly lucky, when he notices the figure standing a few meters behind Tony and the laugh freezes in his throat.

Thor crosses the distance in three long steps and Loki has a slight freak out he pushes away by reminding himself his brother hasn´t hit him since they were twelve years old and still got into fistfights over the remote.

That doesn´t make the iron grip on his forearm any less painful.

"I trusted you." Thor´s not screaming, and Loki has never seen him this angry and not shouting in rage, so he doesn´t know what to expect. Still, the disappointment in his voice riles him up.

"No you didn´t. You never do."

"And I was right, wasn´t I?" This time Thor´s voice goes a bit up. Loki remembers his mother´s words and pierces him with a stare, his chin high and his mouth shut tight. He can´t deny anything now. "Move." He orders him and pulls at him.

Tony, who has remained silent during the brief exchange, shoots forward at the manhandling and Loki rolls his eyes. This is becoming a soap opera.

"He can walk by himself, can´t you, Loki?" The words have barely left his lips when Thor´s already turning around and shooting him a deadly glare. Loki cheers mentally when Tony doesn´t budge.

"You should be ashamed." Is all he says at first. Then, after a long pause in which Loki´s a bit concerned about the tightening grip on his forearm. "If I ever see you around my future husband again, Tony, Steve will know about this."

And he turns and Loki lets himself be dragged because he _knows_ he lost this one. He looks back one last time and the sight of the bearded man with clenched fists and slumped shoulders looking like someone just ran over his dog is much sadder than it should, considering he knew this would happen from the very beginning.


	5. I can´t make you love me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It does not take much strength to do things, but it requires a great deal of strength to decide what to do.

**5**

**I can´t make you love me**

Thor doesn´t say a word while he drags his brother home, or even after he closes the door behind them and Loki is giving him that daring look. He´s just too angry.

In fact, he doesn´t manage to speak again until he´s at the top of the stairs and even then only one word leaves his lips.

"Why?" He asks, but he doesn´t stay to hear an answer he already knows too well. He knows Loki won´t leave, won´t go back to look for Tony, not now that Thor has actually seen them. He lets his head rest against his locked bedroom door and has to contain a scream as the words he spoke so many weeks ago come back to him.

_"You really do like this guy."_

How the fuck could Loki have been so stupid?!

They had known the plan for years, since they were twelve and his father browsed through his business contacts, looking for one that had both his trust ad a kid close to their age, and back then they only knew it as `plan B´ and no one ever talked about it because it seemed like such a far off event.

When the time came and they ran out of options they agreed, both of them. Thor was seventeen and dating Sif at the time but he _had_ agreed. He had agreed because even back then he knew he loved his brother more than he would ever love anyone else, but that night he cried in her arms knowing it was over. He had loved her in that way young people love when they truly mean it: desperately, passionately and like there´s no tomorow, but in the end it wouldn´t have mattered, and he hadn´t wanted to waste her time. Ever since he´d decided not to get seriously involved with anyone. It had been hard, of course, but that was the price of keeping his brother safe and he´d been willing to pay.

And then the stupid, selfish son of a bitch (Thor has never been more grateful for being one of those rare people that can actually use that insult against their siblings) goes and falls in love.

Like he doesn´t know how it will end.  
Like he doesn´t know Thor has been holding back for his sake for years.  
Like it doesn´t even matter that he has.

But then again it doesn´t. Not to him at least, because Loki always gets what he wants. Of course Loki doesn´t care about Steve, Steve who stayed over at the library week after week until Thor had a reasonable chance of approving his Art History course even when they had known each other for barely a month. Steve who´s always so nice and polite and will absolutely tear you apart on anything sports related. Who told him he´d met this guy that was a bit insufferable but he kind of liked him either way, all with the biggest fucking smile on his face. Steve who had called him sounding sad and tired during the first three months because Tony was a douche sometimes and had confessed he loved him when Thor asked why he didn´t just dump him.

He didn´t care about that.

What rattles him the most, what should surprise him but doesn´t because he has grown to know him is that Tony walked willingly into it. If Loki is to be trusted (and as much as it weighs down on him to admit it, most of the times he isn´t) he had been the one to approach him first.

He sighs.

So... his future husband is in love with his best man´s boyfriend.

His will be a horrible, awkward marriage.

\--

The phone is ringing.

He knows it´s Steve, and he knows why he´s calling. He stirs under the covers and stretches for the receiver, but he doesn´t reach it in time. His gaze focuses on the two tickets on the night table.

It´s easy, really. He could tell Steve he had had a fight with Loki. That after seeing the rehearsal he didn´t really want to see the real thing. That he´d thought it would be better if they called for take-out and streamed the movie while cuddling in the bed.

But that´s not what he wants to do.

He wants to go to the stupid play on his own and laugh to himself when Loki walks into scene in those horrible pants and tape it all to watch it again later with two warm mugs of coffee and Loki´s legs draped over his lap.

He wants to go to the stupid play with Steve and think nothing of Grantaire asides from `whoa, that guy has a great voice´ and `those pants must be a crime´, and then go home with his awesome boyfriend and never think of him again.

The phone starts ringing again and he picks it up right away.

"Hey babe." For first time the petname leaves a bitter aftertaste in his mouth. "Were you the one that called before? I was holed up in the bathroom." The lie slips past his lips much too easily and he has the fleeting thought that he should be worried about that.

 _`Why? Are you not feeling well?´_ Steve sounds worried, confused.

"Not really. Whoever did my shawarma last night didn´t put neither love nor minimum hygiene into it."

_`Do you want me to go over?´_

"I´ll be fine. I´m sorry though, I know you wanted to go see the play."

_`That´s ok. We can always watch the movie some other day. Are you sure you don´t want me to go there?´_

"Jarvis is fixing me something to drink right now, I´ll be up and kicking in a pinch. I´ll call Bruce, I think he wanted to take Darcy but there weren´t any tickets left." Steve laughs through the phone and he loves his laughter _so much_ and it pisses him off.

_`Is it official, then?´_

"Kind of. Just don´t ask too much, he gets a bit flustered."

_`I´ll remember that. Go get some rest, ok? I´ll call you later. I love you.´_

"I love you too." He answers because he does, and he wishes things didn´t have to be so damned complicated.

\--

Steve tells himself he´s calling for no reason at all. He´s not checking on anything, and he´s an idiot just for thinking that but his fingers have already finished dialing and he doesn´t hang up. He´s not doing anything bad, after all.

"Hey Thor."

 _`Steve? Hey. Something happened?´_ His friend sounds a bit out of breath, and he can hear fabric rustling behind his voice.

"Are you on a hurry? I just wanted to wish Loki good luck and to tell him we´re sorry but we won´t be able to see him."

_`... You won´t?´_

"Tony ate something bad, apparently. Bruce will take our tickets."

 _`He finally asked Darcy out?´_ Thor asks with a hint of humor. Someone yells his name in the background, and he covers t phone´s mic with a hand to yell back. _`I´m sorry man, I have to go now. I´ll tell him when I see him, my dad just dropped him at the theater fifteen minutes ago and he´s waiting for me and my mom now. Tell Tony I hope he gets better.´_

"I will. Have fun."

Steve hangs up and he lets out a breath he didn´t know he was holding. Of course he´s just being an idiot.

\--

"You look like crap."

"I love you too."

Anansi grins and passes him a honey flavored breath mint.

"Thor saw us."

"Oh." Just like that the grin slips off his face and he moves to sit next to him. "Is it over then?"

"I guess."

"... You got it bad, don´t you?"

Loki doesn´t say a thing, he just nods (there´s no use on denying it anymore, the last time he went out with the same person for so long without sex it had been just because they were both too young to buy protection.) and Anansi lets out an impressed whistle.

"What are you going to do?"

And really, that´s the question. The one that makes him want to punch someone because the answer is so clear and so entirely not what he wants it to be.

"I don´t know." He really, really doesn´t. Anansi leans against him.

"Wanna stay at my place tonight? I can get us ice cream and Legally Blonde."

"You´re just offering because _you_ like Legally Blonde."

"You mean you don´t?!" Anansi frowns, genuinely offended. Loki feels laughter bubbling in his chest and he lets it flow freely. He needs it right now.

"I´ll take you up on that." He answers and goes to find his horrible pants.

\--

"Can I tell you a secret?" He asks Rhodey when he meets him on Monday. His best friend frowns.

"I think the real question is whether I want to hear the secret or not." But he takes a sip of his beer and gives him a look that encourages him to go on. Tony takes a deep breath.

"He´s tall and hot and beautiful, and he´s more than just a bit weird. He´s smart and funny, and he makes me want to stay just five more minutes until I look up at the clock and it´s been four hours."

Rhodey huffs, pretending to be annoyed. "Really, Tony? Gloatin..."

"And I _can´t_ have him."

Tony wants to bury his face in his hands, but he keeps his eyes fixed on Rhodey´s. Said eyes widen in surprise and the bottle sits on the table with a bit more strength than necessary.

"Oh god..." He whispers. "We´re not talking about Steve, are we?" Tony shakes his head and he adds. "Who is it, then?"

"Loki Borson."

Tony watches as his friend´s face first pales ad then crumbles as it dawns on him that he does know another person with that last name.

"Really?" He asks, and Tony nods again.

Rhodey sighs and turns to the waiter to ask him for another couple of beers and Tony thanks him mentally because this is going to be a tough conversation.

"How did it happen?"

"In the stupidest way possible, and it´s actually Brucie´s fault."

"Is that so?"

"He was the one that told me I should go out with him." He shrugs and Rhodey frowns.

"He did what?"

Tony takes a sip on the fresh beer the waiter just left in front of him and sets to explain everything. Rhodey listens in complete silence, wincing appropriately when he gets to Thor finding out. When he finishes, he watches his friend take a long swig of his bottle and waits for his verdict.

"It does sound like Bruce´s fault." Is the first thing he says and Tony wants to kiss him. Then he sighs. "Are you sure it had nothing to do with the heat?"

"Maybe at first. The rest all just... Happened."

"And what about Steve?"

Tony rubs his brow. "Steve... I love him."

"Then why don´t you just dump Loki? I mean, figuratively speaking, since Thor dumped you in his place."

Dump Loki. The words echo in his mind and they shouldn´t sound like such a foreign concept. Loki wasn´t in his life before. Not so long ago Steve had been all he needed. He still is. But, and he tried to shut the thought down as soon as it formed, he's not what he wants anymore.

"I couldn´t." He sighs. "How can that be a thing, Rhodey? How can you still love someone when you..." He makes a vague gesture, not willing to finish the sentence.

"... When you don´t want to be with them anymore?"

"It´s not..."

"You want to be with this nutcase, don´t you?"

"... Yes." He says the truth (there´s no use in trying to lie to Rhodey) and he´s surprised to feel a weight lifted off his chest.

"And why can´t you be with him?"

"Because his brother will murder me. And his father too, probably."

Rhodey rolls his eyes. "If you were to actually ask for Loki in marriage given that you two had done this the right way and not behind everyone´s backs, his father would probably agree even before you get to finish proposing. Isn´t he marrying his brother because his mother disowned him? Stark Industries are nearly as big as Asgard International. Now, _why_ can´t you be with him?"

Tony stays silent for a second that feels like an eternity. He doesn´t want to say it, but Rhodey´s stare is hard and coaxing.

"Because of Steve."

His friend nods slowly, like he´s confirming someone just died.

"Is he worth it, Tony? Is this guy worth losing what you have with Steve?"

That Tony knows, and the sudden certainty makes him laugh.

"He´s a piece of shit. He´s the biggest piece of shit I´ve ever met and if he hadn´t kissed me first I would´ve done it myself." He downs his beer, holding the bottle with shaky hands. "I almost ruined the best relationship I´ve ever had since I screwed it with Peps and the only thing I can think of is that I wish Steve didn´t have to come out hurt, it's like it's decided already.

Rhodey nods again and downs his drink as well.

"When will I meet him?"

"Who?"

"Loki?"

"Well... Never. Not with Thor lurking around."

"He said he´d tell Steve if he ever saw you with him again, didn´t he?"

"Yep."

"Then let´s make sure he doesn´t see us."

"... Why are you not mad at me, man?"

This time when Rhodey rolls his eyes his smile is annoyed and fond.

"Because you´re my friend, Tony. I care about you. Steve has Thor and that creepy Bucky guy to care for him. And don´t take me wrong, I like Steve, but he´s not Jesus reborn like everyone thinks." He starts. "He loves you, and he´s helped you settle down, but the guy is a bit too clingy sometimes, isn´t he? And a bit boring, in my opinion." He laughs a little, as if ashamed. "Don´t worry, though, I´ll probably find something wrong with this guy too, and Peps and Happy will too. It´s our job."

"What do I do?" He asks, feeling like he´s twelve again and asking a stick-thin Rhodey how to make everything hurt less.

"Break up with Steve before Thor forces it on you?"

"... Did you miss the part in which I still love Steve? I don´t want him to think he wasn´t enough for me."

"Well, he´s not going to break up with you anytime soon so good luck with that."

Tony stares in silence as Rhodey asks for the bill and snatches it as soon as it gets dropped on the table, giving it back to the waiter along with his credit card.

"Do you really want to meet him?"

"Why not? You haven´t looked this desperate for someone since that time you got Pepper strawberries for her birthday."

"Yeah... Let´s not talk about that."

\--

"Why are you calling me?" Loki speaks into the phone and he feels as tired as he sounds. It´s the second weekend he´s spent over at Anansi´s and they´re watching Lilo&Stitch now because they ran out of Reese Witherspoon movies and apparently Anansi hates him. The fucking kid is talking about her fucking dead parents in the screen and he´s glad he has the call to focus on.

 _`It´s easier to delete one call register than ten texts.´_ Tony states calmly.

"You know perfectly well what I mean."

_`I want to see you.´_

"Are you forgetting what Thor said or are you just an idiot?"

 _`I might be a bit of an idiot. I want to see you.´_ He repeats and Loki feels his throat dry and his stomach drop.

"He wasn´t bluffing. He _will_ tell him."

_`Did I stutter or something?"_

His heartbeat speeds and he forces himself to ignore it. "... When and where?"

Anansi pauses the movie so violently he fears for the remote and leans in to listen, but Loki pushes him away as he memorizes the directions.

-

"He didn´t suspect?" Tony´s standing at the entrance of the nondescript bar, and he offers a hand as soon as he´s close enough. Loki stares down at it for a moment, and then looks back up at Tony´s face.

"My mom pretended we were going to the movies." The hand is still stretched. "I won´t have someone else´s leftovers."

He sighs, but there´s a sad, lopsided smile on his face. "I´m working things out."

And for the time being, that´s enough.

He takes his hand and leans down to kiss his forehead.

"What about him?"

"He´s meeting with a friend of his this afternoon."

They walk into the bar, and Tony guides him to a table that´s already occupied by a dark-skinned Beta guy wearing a lime-green polo.

"You should have told me this was a double date. I would´ve brought someone." He tries to smirk, but he´s tense and the result is probably pitiful.

Tony laughs and the guy turns at the sound of his voice. Loki doesn´t recognize him, but the way the man´s eyes stay focused on him makes it clear that he _knows_. He tenses even further, but Tony pushes him forward and the man stands up.

"Loki, this is Rhodey."

The man (Rhodes, he corrects himself) composes a smile and offers a hand to shake.

Oh.

"Nice to meet you."

He squeezes Tony´s hand before letting it go to shake Rhodes´ .

"Same. I´ve heard a lot about you."

"I can´t say the same, apparently. Why don´t you take a seat and we fix that?" He gestures at the table and the three of them sit down. There´s a bit of an awkward silence that Tony fills by calling the waiter so that Loki can order a drink. When his beer comes, Loki grips it tight just to have something to do with his hands.

It´s been a while since the last time he did this.

Most of his relationships are one-night stands, and even when they last longer... Well, not many people want to introduce their friends to that Omega that has slept with literally everyone. So yeah, it´s been a while since he went through this routine.

Still, it´s nice, and Tony doesn´t let go of his free hand for a second.

Rhodes (he gets told pretty soon that his name is actually James, but somehow calling him that feels wrong) is one year from finishing his pilot training, he´s single, he loves parties and the way he talks and laughs and pushes Tony across the table makes him think of himself and Thor not so long ago.

They talk for the best part of an hour, until Tony excuses himself to go to the bathroom, and it´s then that he decides maybe this _thing_ has a chance after all.

"This was unexpected." He leans back against the chair.

"Was it?" Rhodes asks, smiling, and Loki smirks back.

"Not many people want to meet `the fling´, I assure you."

Rhodes whistles and rolls his eyes.

"Boy, if you keep thinking of yourself as just a fling, then you are just a fling." Then he sobers up, and the mood tenses. He leans on the table, as close to him as he can without rising from his chair. "Are you good for my boy, Loki?"

"Are we seriously doing this?" Loki asks, but the other just keeps staring. "Fine, then. Probably not."

"Then why should he break up a year and a half long relationship to date you?"

"He shouldn´t." He shrugs and grins. "But he wants to. And if I´ve learned anything over this past two months... Well, we both do what we want, don´t we?"

It takes a moment, but the man smiles back.

"At least you know how he works."

\--

They don´t stay long. Loki has a time limit, after all, and Tony´s walking him to the bus stop much sooner than he´d have wanted.

"So? Did you like Rhodey?" He asks, nudging Loki´s ribs and smiling. "There´s just one right answer, by the way."

Loki chuckles and rolls his eyes, taking a seat on the bus stop as they reach it. Tony stays on his feet at his side and watches him curiously.

"He reminds me of Thor."

"How so?" Tony frowns because he doesn´t see it. Loki´s expression softens and saddens a bit.

"He´s like a big brother."

Tony smiles and runs his hands through his soft black hair, pulling him close against his chest.

"If it´s of any help, he´s going to be so angry at me he´ll forget he ever was angry at you."

"I hope so."

Tony lets go, still smiling, and sits next to Loki.

"Thanks." The word is muttered hurriedly and lowly, but he still hears it and turns to him.

"What?" He asks. Loki stares at him for a second, and then leans in to steal a kiss. "... Oh." He sighs. "Yeah. Just... Give me some time, would you? A few days... Steve has been really good to me. I don´t want him to think he did anything wrong."

Loki´s lips arch into a sharp curve and one of his eyebrows rise.

"Then what happened?"

He rolls his eyes, and takes the bait.

"I sold my soul to the devil." He wraps an arm around his shoulders and kisses his cheek one last time before pointing down the street. "That´s yours, isn´t it?"

"It is. I´ll text you from Anansi´s phone." They stand up, and their hands have found their way into each other´s.

"Nice, I´ll send him nudes."

"Please do, I´d like to see what you do when he responds in kind." Loki smirks and climbs on the bus.

Tony waves at him when he sits down by the window, and watches the bus grow smaller and disappear in the distance with the feeling of someone that´s _finally_ doing things right. He feels at ease as he walks all the way back to his car, and he knows things are going to work out just fine.

Of course, one should never trust a good feeling.


	6. Cold shoulder

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There ain't no way you can hold onto something that wants to go. You can only love what you got while you got it.

**6**

**Cold shoulder**

"Hey babe." Tony greets happily on the phone, even when he feels everything but. It´s a Friday night and he´s parked in front of Steve´s apartment building, like so many other Friday nights. Only tonight is different, his hands are shaking a bit and he feels short of breath. "Are you home right now?"

_`Yes. Are you coming?´_

"I thought I´d swing by."

 _`Good.´_ Is all Steve says before he hangs up, and there´s suddenly an ominous feeling hanging in the air. Tony forces himself to take a deep breath and step out of the car.

The building´s staircase is as gray and ugly as always, and every step he climbs is a memory of the past year. He´s barely halfway up when he wants to turn around and pretend nothing happened, and from then on it´s just plain ridiculous, how much it hurts. Like he´s killing something with every step he takes, which he supposes he´s doing.

The door stares back at him, plain and blue and making him think of that time he was roughly slammed up against it and Steve had to repaint it the next day because of the scratch marks. He pulls out the key and remembers how worried Steve had looked when he offered it and how he´d spent the night saying thank you a thousand different times without really speaking at all.

He pushes the door and the view of the apartment hits him like it´s already a memory lost in the wind. He feels nostalgic even though he was here just yesterday, and he knows it´s the last time he visits it and feels home.

Steve is sitting at the small green armchair, the one Tony bought him because the old one he found at a garage sale had a mice family living in it and he´d been heartbroken that he had to throw it away. The mice are still currently living in a fridge-sized cage Tony had also bought because Steve was Steve and he wasn´t about to let a mice family homeless.

He´s wearing that t-shirt with the eagle Tony steals as often as he can because it smells like him and that´s precisely the moment in which Tony realizes he can´t do it. He just can´t.

"Hey-"

"What is this?" Steve interrupts him. Only then does he notice the photograph on the coffeetable. His heart skips a beat and his mind is a mess of _can´t be, this isn´t happening, how, nonono_ , but he steps closer anyways. Steve doesn´t look up at him and he´s glad, he doesn´t feel like he can return the stare right now.

The photo was taken two days ago, at the bus stop. A part of his mind wonders where the hell was the person standing to have that clear a shot and not be seen and the other is yelling at it to shut up because the only thing that matters is that he´s in the picture and so is Loki and they´re kissing and he wants to die.

"Where did this come from?" He asks, and he´s proud of his lack of stuttering.

"Someone had slipped it under the front door. I found it when I came out of the shower." Steve answers, still no looking up. "... I guess I already knew."

Tony wants to say something, to reassure him it was his and his own fault only, but his mouth is dry like a piece of cardboard.

"How long?"

"What?"

"How long has it been going on?" This time Steve does look up, and the lack of sadness in his eyes is actually frightening. There´s just cold determination and not a speck of emotion.

"Steve I´m-"

"Don´t. Don´t say you´re sorry."

"I am, I swear-"

"Maybe you are. I don´t care."

"Steve..."

"What was it? You were suddenly in the mood for a brunet? Is he better in bed?"

"... Please..." His voice is breaking and he doesn´t really know what he´s asking for, and he should be glad that Steve is furious and not sad, but it´s not how he feels and he pleads anyway.

"Was it my fault? Did I do something wrong?" Steve´s questions, muttered through clenched teeth instead of sobbed out, slaps him back to reality.

"Of course not! No, Steve, you... It´s my fault, I-"

"You can go now. I only wanted to clear that off."

"Babe-"

"Please leave, Tony." Steve stands up from the armchair and walks to the front door to hold it open."

"But-"

"I don´t want to see you right now. Please leave and don´t call me." And that´s the last he says. Tony waits a second, just to be sure, and then walks through the door. He´s just turned around to apologize one last time, but the door is already closed.

He sighs, and forces himself to walk down the two flies of stairs and into his car. How the phone made it to his hand is a mystery, but the call gets picked up almost immediately.

 _`Hey.´_ That´s Loki´s voice. _`I thought you said you weren´t going to call me on this number.´_ His voice is curious and with a hint of reproach and when Tony thinks of why he shouldn´t be calling to that number and the inutility of it, he breaks down again and his mind goes blank. _`Tony?´_ Loki asks, but the other has no clue as to how to work his lips and tongue right now.

_`... What happened?´_

That´s a question he doesn´t know how to answer.

 _`... Can you get to your house?´_ Comes after a moment, and that he does know. He makes a sound that must sound vaguely affirmative, and the only thing Loki says is _`Then go. I´ll meet you there.´_

His brain seems to kick back into place at the command, but he feels as if someone else is driving, as if the hands clenched white on the wheel don´t belong to him.

In his mind, he´s still up at the door, wondering if it´ll ever open again.

\--

He leans against the door as soon as the steps on the hallway fade, and lets himself slip slowly until he´s sitting on the floor.

All the strength he felt earlier seems to have abandoned him, the same way it did just after Peggy told him she was leaving for the military. The cold understanding is gone and he´s a shell of himself filling slowly with desperation.

He remembers the past months. The easy friendship he´d seen Tony build with Loki and how happy he´d been that his boyfriend had found a friend he got along with as good as he did with those he´d known his whole life.

He remembers the foreign smell and the wrinkled shirt. The way he´d looked at him when he had appeared at the rehearsal. The calls he never picked up and the ones he ended too quickly, and all those fancy dinners and presents for no reason at all. All the signs he´d seen, but had chosen to ignore.

He clenches his head in his hands and cries his rage away in silence.

\--

The sport car is already in the driveway when Loki walks past the gate, and Jarvis is waiting at the door.

"Mr. Borson." He greets. "Mr. Stark went straight to his bedroom."

There´s no hint of reproach or accusation in the voice of the man that obviously knows who Tony´s boyfriend really is, and what´s going on with them. The only thing Loki hears is the man´s sincere worry for this man he´s known since he was a child, and he knows he doesn´t really care about who takes care of him, only that someone _does_ it.

"Thanks. What door was that again?"

"Third on the left." He gestures up the stairs, and Loki nods.

"I´ll go check on him." He promises before he resumes his way up the stairs.

The door is slightly parted, and the lights are off. His hand is trembling when he places it against the wood, but he forces himself to push instead of following his instinct to turn around and go back home.

He waits until his eyes have adapted to the darkness before going in, and the dim streetlight coming in through the curtains is enough for him to map the room. There´s a desk on a corner and a table by the window and two white doors. He assumes the darker rectangles on the wall are posters, and the bed is on the center of the room, wide and occupied.

Tony uncurls and turns his back to him when the mattress goes down with his weigh. Loki lets him be, and focuses instead on pulling his shoes off so he can sit cross-legged on the black sheets.

"What happened?" He asks, his voice low and clear.

"There was a picture." He´s a bit surprised that Tony´s voice is not slurred or breaking, but he keeps it to himself. The better for him.

"A picture?"

"Of us. On the bus stop. The day we went out with Rhodey. Steve had it."

His voice does falter then, and Loki wants to murder someone.

Because their farce is coming apart by the second, because it didn´t work the way they had planned, because Tony obviously still cares so much.

He knows what he should do.

Offers a hand to hold, a shoulder to cry on, a chest to hide in.

He knows he should be a comfort to this man that should be his and that he´s risked so much for. But he can´t bring himself to do it. Much less when he can imagine how easily Steve would have done it, how natural it would have been for him.

He leans back on his elbows and stretches until he´s lying shoulder to shoulder with Tony, and silently thanks the hand that seeks his own. He squeezes it and pulls at it until it´s resting against his cheek and leaves it there.

"I love him, you know?" Tony starts and Loki nods in silence even though the words feel like a kick to the face. "I had just broken up with Pepper when I started going out with him and I wanted to scare him off. But it didn´t work, and one day I woke up and didn´t touch a single bottle in the whole day and the first person I wanted to call was him and I _knew_."

Loki turns his face slightly, just in case. He doesn´t really know the feeling, not personally, but he doesn´t doubt it. Not when it´s him explaining it and it sounds so sincere and he feels all this absurd jealously.

"I´m sorry." And he truly is, at least for the broken man whose fingers are slowly coming back to life and caressing his cheek.

"He´s ridiculous. He gets up at four in the morning to go jogging, and he gave up on trying to take me along when he noticed I´d rather not sleep at all than getting up that early." He continues. "His pancakes are fucking perfect, but he can´t put together a decent apple pie to save his life and it´s like a personal blow to his patriotic pride." His breathing steadies slowly after he stops again. And then "I shouldn´t be telling you this."

Loki bites back the bitter laugh that climbs up his throat. He wants to do this nearly as much as he wants to saw his toe off, but he can take it. He´s done worse.

"I´m fine." He shrugs as the lie escapes his mouth. Tony shifts, and brings their intertwined fingers to his lips, and his breath warms them when he starts talking again.

By the time he´s finished, his fingers are burning, but Loki´s freezing. He knows Steve is saving money for a motorcycle, he knows he hates wearing clothes that are too tight but that due to his size his choices are pretty limited. He knows he tried to own a cat but it turned out he was allergic ad now he has fifteen mice in a cage. He knows he wakes up in the middle of the night to sketch and then won´t touch a brush or a pencil in weeks. He knows everything about Steve, and he begins to think maybe the cold that has settled over him has little to do with the open window.

Tony squirms up the mattress and pulls him closer so that Loki´s head is resting on his chest. Loki pushes the ridiculous led light pendant away and drapes an arm across his belly.

"I´m sorry." Tony breaks the silence. Loki doesn´t answer, and they fall asleep like that.

-

When they wake up they find that somehow Loki managed to snake an arm under Tony´s waist and encage him in his grip. Tony chuckles lazily, and he feels as though last night was only a dream.

"I didn´t take you for a cuddler, sweetchee-" He tries to say before he´s kicked off the bed, and he climbs back up laughing fully. "Ok, then. We´re not talking about it."

Loki rolls his eyes and huffs as he stands off the bed.

"Let me use your shower, will you?"

"Go ahead." Tony gestures to a white door near the corner and then rubs his face with an embarrassed smile."I´d usually ask if I can join you, but..."

"Your loss." Loki smirks over his shoulder and closes the bathroom door behind him.

The room is spacious and mostly white, and the stream of water is pleasantly warm from the moment he turns the tap. He soothes the stiffness off the arm that spent a questionable amount of time under Tony and he feels surprisingly at ease.

When he emerges from the steam-filled room twenty minutes later, dressed in the same clothes he slept in but considerably fresher, Tony´s taking two plates from a tray on his desk to the small table by the window.

"Five sugars." He says as he offers him a cup of hot, black coffee. Loki takes a sip and the sheer intensity of the taste is enough to make him question how he´s ever lived without Jarvis´ coffee.

"Can I marry your butler?" He asks after another hurried sip, and Tony smiles again.

"I wouldn´t recommend it. He´s got too many rules and from what I´ve seen you don´t deal too well with those."

He leans for a kiss that surely tastes of coffee and toothpaste, and he stays close after parting, his lips resting on Loki´s chin.

"You smell like me." He says, and his eyes glimmer with something Loki has seen a hundred times. He smirks back, stretching his neck a bit longer.

"It´s the best I could manage, since you weren´t too interested." He teases, and it´s enough. Tony´s kissing his neck in a flat second, his beard coarse and caressing the sensitive skin as he nips and licks, and somehow the back of his knees is hitting against the bed´s edge.

Loki feels like his smirk will break his face in two, as he turns them around and straddles Tony´s lap to grind their crotches together.

Tony groans and threads his right hand in his hair to bring him in for a kiss, and Loki´s hands fly down to the hem of his pants, and he pops the button open and pulls the zipper down and... And his own pocket is vibrating.

"Ah, you´re fucking _kidding_ me!" Tony exclaims when he stops to pull the cell phone out."It´s not even funny anymore!" He yells to the roof, as is reprimanding some sadistic deity, before turning to him. "Could you just ignore it?"

Loki can literally smell the impatient arousal on him, but he checks the screen anyways, annoyed by the tenting and the slight wetness in his pants, and frowns. "It´s from Anansi. And I´ve got another one, earlier. From Natasha."

Tony straightens himself at that, his curiosity peaking its head as Loki reads the first text.

"Check today´s newspaper?" He reads aloud, and then moves on to the next. "You´re in the paper, baby doll."

"What?" Tony asks, but Loki ignores him in favor of the sinking feeling in his stomach. He was gone for a night only, he´s been gone for longer before, they can´t have reported him missing so soon.

"Do you-"

"The laptop is on the desk." Tony says immediately, and stands up after he does.

The computer is on standby and Loki waits until Tony types in the password ( `Illtellyouinthemorning´, and really, Loki would roll his eyes if he weren´t thinking of something much more important right then.). Soon enough they´re flipping through the pages of the virtual version of the local newspaper, and Loki feels his blood run cold when he finds his face looking back at him.

He suddenly wishes he had been in the missing people section.

"We´re pleased to report..." Tony mutters lowly, but his voice fades into an unintelligible grunt after that, as he reads the rest of the article. Loki´s eyes drift over the words and his brain catches only stray fragments.

_`Omega foster son.´_

_`Engaged.´_

_`Inheritance.´_

_`Wedding´_

"Next week?! You didn´t say it was scheduled for next week!" Tony recoils from the computer as if it had burned his face, and Loki just stays there, staring. Why hadn´t they warned him about this? When had they decided it? Did Thor now, or was he holed up in his bedroom tearing the paper to shreds? Tony´s stare on his nape feels like a ray of sunlight, and he sees understanding in his face when he turns. "You didn´t know. Did you?"

Loki keeps silent despite the crazed voices yelling over each other in his mind, and he barely notices Tony getting on his knees in front of him until he feels his hands cupping his face.

"Hey. Hey." He mutters. "What are we going to do?"

His internal cacophony shuts down at that, and the sudden silence is dizzying.

There´s no way his father is calling the marriage off. Not now that it´s public news.

His tongue feels dry and heavy, stuck to the roof of his mouth when he opens it.

"I´m going home." He forces out, and his voice sounds much steadier than he expected it to. No inflections, no emotions. Just words.

Tony pushes his hair back as he climbs to his feet.

"Fine, then. Give me ten minutes to get ready and I´ll come with you."

"No."

"... Why not?"

He smiles, lopsided and probably creepy. "I don´t think I´m getting out of this now." He explains, and his words still sound cold and uninteresting, and he hopes he can keep it up. "You go with Steve."

Tony´s frown melts down and his face falls plain like an empty canvas as he stares at him.

"With Steve?"

Loki shrugs and it feels like giving up, like admitting he´s lost, but he´s too tired to get mad.

Tony´s hand grips his wrist a bit too hard, but he allows it. He allows him to pull him to his feet and to bury his head on his chest and to smell their mixed scents, and pretends not to listen to the muttered _`You´re a fucking idiot´_ against it, not to feel the warm breath through his clothes and on his skin that was so hot just mere minutes ago.

And right in that moment, he thinks that maybe, just maybe, he understands what Tony said last night. Maybe he _does_ know the feeling.

\--

Loki doesn´t want him to drive him home, arguing that he needs time to think and the walk will do just fine, so Tony sets to walk him to the front gate and hold his hand when he kisses him goodbye. The kiss itself is bitter, but the meaning of the gesture is still there.

They don´t say a thing after they part, not an `I´ll call you later´, or a `Text me when you get there´. Nothing.

He watches him grow smaller in the distance until he disappears, and he´s never felt like a bigger douchebag than when he pulls his phone off his pockets and sends text he knows won´t be welcomed.

_`Can I see you today? I want to explain everything.´_

\--

_`Can I see you today? I want to explain everything.´_

The text blinks in the screen and Steve looks back from a barely finished sketch.

He takes a deep breath and texts back.

Then, he tears the sketch in two and drops it into a pile of shredded paper, before grabbing a hold of his pencil to start a new one.

\--

Steve doesn´t offer him a seat, so he doesn´t take any. In fact, he doesn´t even look at him for a full minute after he walks into the apartment.

"I-"

"Did you spend the night with him?" Is the first think he says, still with his back turned to him.

"Don´t give me that crap, you know I didn´t." Tony answers through clenched teeth because he can´t tell him that _`Yes I did, I spent the night telling him about how you hate broccoli in salads but love it in soups, and have a horrible taste in suits that´s actually adorable and I´m sure it tore him down because he has an inferiority complex the size of fucking China, but he_ listened _to me because I_ needed _it_.´ and he wants to tell him so bad.

"Thor just called me." He continues as if he´d never spoken. "He said the wedding is going to happen a week from now. Apparently their parents sent the invitations so that they didn´t have to worry about it and could focus on the graduation."

"... Why are you telling me this?"

"You said you wanted to explain?" Again, Steve speaks without acknowledging his question. Tony crosses his arms over his chest and sighs.

"I did. I probably can´t, you know? Not in any way that will leave you satisfied at least. The only thing I can tell without a doubt is that I love you. And that I never planned for this to happen." He mutters.

He knows what he must ask then, but he feels his chest tighten around the words because it feels like he´s beating a dead horse. He´s been around Steve long enough to know there are certain things he just can´t forgive. He´s lived through enough screw ups on his behalf to know that they both love each other, but it won´t matter at all because something broke already and they won´t put it together again. It´s just not possible.

"Is there anything I can do to fix it?" He asks anyway.

"There might be."

"What is it?"

Steve finally turns to him, and pins him with a cold stare.

"You won´t see him again.

"I thought that went without saying."

"It does. But you don´t honestly expect me to just trust your word. Not after this, do you?"

"Not really."

"Is there a place in which you usually meet?" He asks as he crosses the apartment to stand before him.

"There´s this café he likes..." Tony says before he can stop himself, and Steve´s frown grows deeper. "What do you want me to do?"

Steve´s eyes are even colder than before when he announces it. "I want you to meet him there, and tell him you´re done with him."

"... Isn´t that a bit cr-"

"Take it or leave it."

Tony rubs a hand over his face, and sighs. He feels as deflated as Loki looked when he told him to come back here. Then he pulls out his phone, and writes a single text for him, telling him where and at what time he wants to meet. Then he shows it to Steve, and it´s almost worth it, with the way his frown softens.

"You aren´t off the hook yet, just to be sure."

"Just... I´m sorry."

He is. For everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also, to that reviewer that mentioned how they´ll probably get married without premarital sex and it´ll be totally ironic, your comment was in my mind during this whole chapter


	7. Make you feel my love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You usually have to wait for that which is worth waiting for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Readers, if you´re uncomfortable with Alpha/Omega sex scenes or sex scenes in general you can skip it from the moment they go into the house to the next POV)  
> To Heidi: As funny as it would have been to watch your prophecy become true, I´m afraid it´s over now.

**7**

**Make you feel my love**

Loki knows what he´s going to get the moment he receives the text the day before, but he goes to the café anyways, and he takes a table by the window ten minutes before five o´clock.

He´s been sitting there for five of those extra minutes when he notices the blond man across the street, and he smirks. So Steve wanted to make sure.

Five more minutes, and he decides he might as well have something to drink. He checks his phone for any messages or voicemails, but there are none, and he sips his coffee growing increasingly amused by Steve´s poorly disguised impatience.

It´s five thirty and Steve is calling someone. Someone that doesn´t answer, judging by the way he violently stuffs his phone back in his jacket pocket just a second later. Loki can´t help it, he toasts him with the half empty mug when he looks back up again. They are the same after all, two idiots waiting for a man that will not come.

He sends two texts by six. The first reads _`This has got to be the stupidest thing you´ve ever done.´_

The second, _`Thank you.´_

Steve walks though the door at six fifteen, and sits across from him.

"They make killer macchiatos here, in case you want to order something." Loki sips what´s left of his coffee, and he´s ready by the time he sets the mug back on the table.

"Let´s not pretend here, ok?" Steve answers, ignoring him. He nods.

"Let´s not."

"I don´t like some of the things you´ve been doing."

"Weird... I don´t recall doing anything particularly bad these lasts months." Loki pretends to think, his chin nested on his hand.

"How about my boyfriend?"

"Hmmm... Yes, I might have a vague memory of doing that" He smirks because there´s _no way_ he´s telling Steve of all people that he hasn´t even gotten a handjob out of the man, much less the whole thing.

Steve doesn´t react, doesn´t frown, but the muscles in his forearms twitch and tense and Loki has a pretty good idea of what he´s in for.

"It was neither my intention nor his, if that helps."

"It doesn´t."

"No, I didn´t think it would."

Steve shuffles to stand up, and Loki takes a firmer stance on his chair. He doesn´t even turn to look as the other man´s steps approach him.

The punch is expected but God, does he _know_ how to punch. His vision flickers for a second, but he keeps it together. It´s not that bad.

"He´s all yours, then." Steve leaves and the waitress is rushing to crouch at Loki´s side, to ask him if he´s ok and if he wants to call the police.

"No, it´s fine. Just... Do you think you could spare me a bag of ice?" He asks with a grin as charming as he can manage when he´s feeling his eye get swollen by the second.

\--

His knuckles are still buzzing when he calls the first number on his call records.

He stops to kick a wall when it goes straight to voicemail again. He feels a dry, tired sort of anger as he opens a blank text because _this is not how these things must go_ but Tony´s being a selfish coward and deep down he knows why.

Tony can deal with hatred and resentment, but disappointment is a completely different matter.

_`Leave my key with Thor. Don´t call me again.´_

\--

"I hope you´re happy now."

Thor turns away from the car trunk and ends up face to face with Tony. Angry Tony, judging by the frown and his tight-clenched fists. He finds it endearing, and smiles in a way he knows will piss him off further.

"So it does shine through. I´m a man about to marry, after all." Just as expected, Tony´s frown deepens and he feels an absurd surge of pride because he might not really share Loki´s blood but he _is_ his brother.

"I didn´t think you´d do it, you know? I didn´t think you´d want to hurt him."

"... Hurt who?" He asks. He hasn´t fought with Loki since he caught them sucking face on the sidewalk, and he knows that doesn´t count because Loki knew perfectly well he had it coming.

"Steve, you IDIOT." Tony yells and even though Thor still has to look down at him, his fury stops being laughable. "I was going to break up with him, tell him it was MY fault! I was going to wait until he was better to date your brother! I never wanted him to get hurt!"

As it rains down on him, Thor feels his stomach sink.

"Steve found out?" And just like that, Tony deflates and confusion takes all the anger away.

"You didn´t send the picture?"

"I told you I´d go to him if you went out with Loki again." He narrows his eyes as suspicions creep up his spine. "You _haven´t_ seen him again, have you?"

"Of course I saw him again! I took him to meet Rhodey because I wanted to show him he wasn´t just a fling! Listen bud, I know you´re pissed off about Steve and you know what? So am I. But it´s time you start seeing the other side of the coin and notice how I crashed the best relationship in my life because I love your brother." Tony´s breathless by the end of his rant, and Thor arches an eyebrow because it took Steve at least eight months to get an `I love you´ out of the man and Loki had gotten it in half the time. As he keeps staring and Tony´s face begins to lose its color, he figures Loki wasn´t even the first to hear it and he rolls his eyes. This idiot...

"I don´t know anything about a picture." He sighs. "I didn´t tell him." There´s a heavier feeling in his stomach trying to drown the worry he feels for his friend. He does, after all, love his brother more than anyone else. And he´s about to go through what happened with him and Sif.

"Then who did?"

"And how should I- What the fuck happened to you?!" Thor cuts himself in the middle of his sentence because Loki´s walking up the street, heading for the house, and he´s got an award-winning bruise over his left eye. Tony turns to check what he´s talking about and he understands everything when he hears him mutter a low `well, fuck´. He shoves past the shorter man to get to his brother.

"Was it Steve?" He asks, amazed not only because Steve would never beat anyone unless it´s in self-defense (let alone an Omega, or Thor´s brother.) but because Loki´s knuckles look perfectly normal and he just can´t believe he didn´t reciprocate in kind.

"Your deductive skills are astounding, Thor." Loki aims for a smirk, and Thor slaps his shoulder when he grimaces in pain.

"Cut the crap, would you? Why didn´t you fight back?"

The smile on Loki´s face is almost embarrassed, as if he was actually capable of feeling shame.

"Oh, I did. I won."

Thor huffs. "Do you need to go to a hospital?" He leans closer to examine the injury, but Loki lazily bats his hand away.

"It´s just a bruise." He waves importance off the matter, and then eyes the car. "Were you going somewhere?"

"Volstagg, Fandral and Hogun are throwing me a... A stag party." He confesses, rolling his eyes. "But I can tell them I´m not in the mood, if you..."

"It´s just a stupid bruise, Thor. I´m not going to die." He snaps. "Besides, when your friends say `party´ they actually mean `tequila chugging tourney´ and occasionally `naked dancing women´ and _no one_ is going to believe you´re not in the mood for that."

Thor sighs because he _did_ pack a strip of condoms and his emergency numbers card in his overnight bag, but he still feels like he should stay.

"Do you think it´ll fade in time?" He asks. Their parents are supposed to be back the next day after their brief trip to bring Frigga´s mother from two states over.

"It should. If it doesn´t, I´ll cover it up."

"Are you sure?"

"Just go to your stupid party. Have fun." Loki rolls his eyes and Thor smiles fondly before hugging him.

"I´ll talk to Steve."

"Don´t. Just one black eye is enough."

Thor turns back to his car and oh, well... He´d certainly forgotten about Tony. His eyes narrow on their own, and his voice comes out a bit harsher than usual.

"I don´t want you in..."

"Bud, this is like the worst time ever, ok? I just broke up with my boyfriend for an engaged guy, I´m hardly in the mood for debauching your brother."

Thor continues scrutinizing him for another long second, but eventually he´s forced to admit he knows perfectly well what´s going to happen the moment he leaves and that he´s already made his choice.

He sends one last look through the rearview mirror and goes.

\--

Tony keeps his gaze fixed on the car that grows steadily smaller by the moment and only looks back after it has turned around a corner and officially disappeared.

He finds Loki staring back with a smirk, and he smiles weakly in response.

"So? Are we going in or not?"

"I thought you were absolutely depressed because of your breakup and wanted to be alone."

He shrugs. "It was my choice. I had it coming. I´m sorry for your eye, though, I didn´t think it´d come to that." He takes a moment to consider his next line, and Loki uses it to wave importance off the bruise again. "And I do want to be alone. With you, that is."

Loki lets out a bark of laughter and pulls the collar of his shirt to bring him in for a kiss. "How incredibly corny of you."

"Shut up and let´s get you some ice. I refuse to make out with a swollen prune."

Loki smiles again (and it looks terribly out of place with his black eye) and moves to open the door. Tony walks after him, but stops at the threshold.

"Something wrong?" Loki turns back when he notices he´s not following.

_`Yes´_ He wants to say, and for a moment he thinks he will. But he thinks of what was and is no more and the urge goes away and he smiles and walks in instead.

-

They never get the ice, so Tony makes sure to be extra careful when he holds Loki´s face as they kiss and scramble their way up to Loki´s bedroom and he doesn´t want to think about what they´ll do when they get there because he just _knows_ he´ll jinx it. By the time they reach the bed he can already smell Loki´s arousal and it´s driving him crazy.

He pushes him down on the bed and buries his face in the crook of his neck, biting and licking at the skin and getting drunk off the scent.

"Are you done there or is this all we´re going to do?" Loki tries to tease him, but his voice is strained and his right hand is clenched tight in the back of his shirt.

"Are you trying to tell me you wouldn´t enjoy it if I tied you up and licked you all over? Because I don´t believe it in the least." He punctuates his threat with a nip at his shoulders and the slight hitch in his breath tells him he hit a mark there. He looks up, and Loki seems to be engaged in a heated, silent debate with himself.

"... Not now." He seems to decide after a small pause. "I just took a fist to the eye because your ex thought you had fucked me into the mattress and that´s the least I expect."

It should be a mood-killer, thinking about Steve right now, but the way Loki´s face mischievously lightens up when addressing him as an ex is just ridiculously charming, and Tony leans in to place a featherlight kiss near the bruise.

"Let´s make it worth it, then." He kisses him on the lips then, and busies his hand at the hem of his shirt. Every inch of white skin uncovered is calling for him and he´s much too eager to obey, caressing up his torso with hands and tongue and teeth and he can´t believe he´s _finally_ doing it.

He lets go of the shirt when he´s got it scrunched over Loki´s collarbone and when the Omega pushes him away slightly to pull it over his head he mimics him hurriedly, throwing first his jacket and then his shirt over his shoulder. Truth to be told, he´s usually a lot better than this, but the buildup was so long and the sight of Loki spread as long as he is on the bed (it´s right there that he finally accepts he _might_ have a size kink, because Pepper was tall and Steve was huge and Loki is a pole. A sexy, sexy pole he wouldn´t mind rubbing himself all over, but a pole still) is just making him clumsy.

He´s just finished unzipping his pants when Loki throws his own off one side of the bed, and his scent hits him like a ton of bricks, all minty and spicy and Loki. He seeks his mouth like a drowning man seeks air, and whispers his name against his lips whenever they have to part to breath and Loki squirms under him until he can wrap those long, muscled legs around his waist and arch up to rub his thinly clothed erection against Tony´s crotch.

"Get those off already." Loki orders with a hoarse voice and a sharp bite to his lower lip that makes Tony smile.

"I said I´d make it worth the wait, didn´t I?" He smirks and licks a stripe down Loki´s neck until he´s nipping on his collarbone and well, he hopes he can cover that with make up or else he´ll have to get married in a turtleneck. The image makes him chuckle while he hooks his thumbs in the elastic of Loki´s black silky underwear (He should be surprised Loki wears this on a day to day basis but then again Loki used to sleep around a _lot_ ) and tugs down. His erection springs up and rubs against his chest as he moves off the bed to admire the view.

The sheets are a light green color and Loki´s hair spread around his head looks like a handful of shiny black feathers. His skin looks much less pale than usual because he´s all flushed, and his chest sports multiple reddened spots he prides himself on. His arms and legs are as long and lean as the rest of him, but lined with chords of muscle that leave no doubt that he´s done his fair share of heavylifting behind the scenes.

He leans on the edge of the bed and stretches a hand to trace the skin pulled taut over a sharp hipbone and inhales deeply as his eyes focus on the reddened tip of the leaking cock lying heavy against his belly.

"You´re..." he starts, looking for the right word, but Loki frowns and kicks his hip.

"Just shut up and fuck me."

Tony rolls his eyes and then straddles him, his elbows on each side of his head to kiss him.

"I would´ve done it from the start if that was all I wanted to do to you." He whispers against his ear when he parts their lips, running his tongue over a soft lobe in a way that brings out a strangled whimper. Loki´s angry blush makes him look like a traffic light when he stands off the bed again, but he smiles anyway. "You´re beautiful."

"And you´re going to be dead in the next five seconds unless you do _something_." He snarls.

"Make some space for me." He mutters, still eating him with his eyes and then looks up when he doesn´t move an inch. Loki´s looking right back at him with an arched eyebrow and a thoughtful pout. "What?"

A small blush dusts over his cheekbones, but the dirty smile he slowly adopts takes away any impression of shyness or insecurity.

"Kneel?" He asks, although his voice makes it clear it´s not a request.

"... I´m guessing this is one of your recurring kinks?" Tony rolls his eyes and moves back when Loki springs up into a sitting position at the edge of the bed and places his hands on his shoulders.

"Not everyone looks good on their knees."

"So I do?"

"I´ve wanted to see you down there from day one." Loki purrs against his chest and _that shouldn´t be so hot_. He stays there a moment too long, so he guesses his own hormones must be kicking pretty hard as well, but suddenly those hands are weighing him down and Tony lets himself be pushed.

Loki gasps when he grabs his cock and gives it a light squeeze, before he nonchalantly takes the head fully into his mouth. He sucks a little, worrying the slit with his tongue and relishing on the moans Loki´s trying to stifle on the back of his hand. He lets the head fall out of his mouth and smirks up at him before he runs his tongue along the underside of the length and it´s so worth it, the way Loki loses his composure and lets out a pleased moan.

When he takes the cock into his mouth again one of Loki´s hands tangles in his hair to push his head down, and Tony feels his Alpha instincts kick in. He lets out a snarl that´s supposed to be a warning, but the resulting vibrations turn Loki into a gasping mess. Tony lets go once more to glare up at him and when Loki recovers enough to give him a wolfish grin and tries to push him back to his cock he decides they might find an interesting dynamic, given that they have a bit more time to work it out. Loki definitely knows how to play an Alpha to his advantage.

He doesn´t let himself be pushed a second time, though, instead wiping his lips with his forearm and sitting back on his heels.

"If this is your idea of making it worth it..." Loki begins to tease, but he slaps the inside of a creamy thigh and effectively shuts him up.

"Feet on the bed." He orders, and smirks when Loki obeys without a single moment of hesitation. The sight of the Omega staring expectantly with his opening so completely exposed for him sends another rush of blood down to the pooling heat in his groin. "Really? Nothing to say? No snarky remarks or-" The bed creaks when Loki rests his weight on one hand to wrap the other behind his head and pull him forward.

Tony´s still smiling as he bats the hand away, and he nips at the delicate skin on the inside of his thigh to leave a reddened trail as he travels lower and lower. He stops there, watching Loki´s hole twitch in anticipation and gleaming slightly with lubrication fluid.

"Last warning, if you don´t do _something_ I´m going out to look for someone who will" Loki hisses and Tony laughs.

"Patience is a virtue, sweetcheeks." He speaks back, pinching one of his buttocks and watching as the rim tenses further with the heat of his breath. He takes mercy at the frustrated groan coming from above and decides it's enough. Loki practically melts down when he presses the flat of his tongue to the tight hole. His hands find their way to each of his thighs to keep them still and spread while he traces the rim with the tip of his tongue.

The lubrication glands are apparently working like crazy, because every time he swipes his tongue across it the hole´s a bit looser, and the taste of Loki´s musk a bit stronger. He pushes his tongue in to check if there´s still a lot of resistance, and the whimper he gets is positively _sinful_.

"I´m going to make you come with my tongue alone..." He mutters, and then there´s a foot pushing him hard enough to make him fall ungracefully on his ass.

"Like hell you are." Loki´s glare loses intensity with his flushed face and panting breath, and the way he blushes harder before adding "... Not right now at least."

Tony can´t help the burst of laughter that climbs up his throat, and he´s glad Loki chooses to shake his head in defeat and chuckle along embarrassedly instead of taking offense.

"Fine, then. You got condoms?"

"There´s a shoebox under the bed."

He chooses not to comment on it because laughing once was good for the tension but twice might actually get him kicked out.

His resolution lasts for as long as it takes him to lift the lid of the box and catch sight of the flesh colored dildo with the impressive knot at the base.

"I KNEW YOU HAD ONE OF THESE!" He exclaims, holding it up and dodging when Loki throws himself off the bed to rip the object from his hands. "Oh, god, I just _knew_ it!"

Loki´s face is a unique mix of aroused, pissed off and embarrassed.

"That´s what Natasha got me for the joke secret Santa."

It takes him a whole minute to suppress his hysterical laughter, with the knotted dildo still in his hands.

"That woman is a fucking gift." He makes a show of wiping an imaginary tear from the corner of his eye. He´s gone a bit soft again but he doesn´t care at all because this time the interruption feels natural and hell, he´s having fun. "Why didn´t you just throw it away?"

Loki shrugs. "It works just fine."

Oh well, welcome back, boner.

His pants feel unbearably tight as he runs the scenario in his head and when Loki´s lips curve into a smile he knows he´s getting a bit of revenge for all his teasing.

"It´s a bit big, though, but I can take it." His voice is down to a husky whisper and he´s crawling towards him. "And when I was in heat some months ago..." He sighs, contented, and pushes him down so that he´s lying flat on the floor. "All alone with no one to keep me company, so hot all the time..." He crosses his arms over his chest to immobilize him, but Tony can still see his ass in the air and he struggles, the dildo forgotten in favor of the picture Loki paints with his words.

"Ok." His throat is dry. "I get it, be a tease, get teased. Can we get on with it now?" He asks. "Please?"

Loki pretends to think it over (at least he hopes he´s pretending) but in the end he sits back on his heels and makes short work of his pants and underwear. Tony sighs when his dick is released and then grunts when Loki gets a grip on it and just _when the hell did he open that condom?_

"Do you want to move to the be- no, wait. That´s better, much better." He trips over his words as Loki straddles his lap and grips his length with a hand as the other clings to his shoulder for stability.

"I was hoping it would shut you up." Loki rolls his eyes, positioning himself so that the head of Tony´s cock is just at his entrance.

"You´ll have to try a bit har-" Tony tries to bite back, but his words dissolve into a hiss as there´s suddenly a tight heat enveloping him and Loki´s sinking his nails in his shoulder, his brow furrowed and his lower lip caught between his teeth. "... You ok?" Tony manages to stutter out. He can feel his knot swelling embarrassingly fast but he guesses that well, he´s just waited for too long, it´s fine to be a bit too eager.

Loki responds by moving his hips in a wide circle and Tony throws his head back with a groan.

"Fuck..." He´s allowed to be a bit less eloquent, isn´t him? Loki braces himself and he´s suddenly bouncing up and down on his cock and he´s trying to match his rhythm and gripping his hips hard enough to bruise.

As soon as he manages to bend his knees and plant his feet firmly on the ground, Loki lets him in charge of the thrusting and instead bends down to kiss him hungrily, moaning into his mouth whenever his knot manages to slip into him. At some point one of his feet slips, but Tony catches his ground again just a second after and the next thrust is apparently angled in such a way that Loki tears his face from his neck (where he´d been busy sucking a hickey because of course he could leave marks now) and just screams.

"There?" Tony asks, breathless.

"There, yes..." Loki stutters out, shaking.

So Tony thrusts deeper and harder and Loki moans and screams each time he rubs against that special spot inside him and Tony´s ridiculously proud of himself when the gripping hands come back to his shoulders and Loki´s meeting his thrusts back and his face looks so deliciously desperate that he wraps a hand around his cock that´s so hard he´s sure it has to hurt, and gives it a couple pulls in time with their thrusting.

It´s over much too soon after that, Loki moaning all through his release over Tony´s stomach. Tony groans as he tightens impossibly around his cock, and he grips his hips harder, trying to still him enough to knot him, but Loki manages to slip a hand between them and wrap it just around his knot. It´s frustrating, really. Or it would have been if the pressure wasn´t all he needed to topple over the edge. His nails leave red crescent moons on both sides of Loki´s hips and he´ll probably be sore where he hit the back of his head a bit too hard against the floor, but Loki´s falling down on him and all he can do to stifle his groans is bite down on his neck nearly hard enough to mark and Loki allows it and it´s _perfect._

When the peak of his orgasm has passed he dulls the strength of the bite to a light nip and rolls Loki on his side, wincing a little when his cock slips out of the welcoming warmth. They breath heavily, shoulder to shoulder on the floor and Tony waits until his knot has receded a bit before taking the condom off and tying it to throw it into the trash can. He goes back to Loki and kisses his cheek meekly.

"We should move to the bed."

"Nah. It´s good down here." Loki mutters while pulling him down so that he´s lying again, his breathing just now getting even. "It´s just cold."

"Gotcha." Tony stretches as much as he can without breaking contact with Loki and manages to pull the comforter off the bed and over them, and Loki curls next to him like a cat because he´s _totally_ a cuddler, whether he likes to admit it or not. "You have to let me see you using the dildo." He mutters, rubbing lazy circles across Loki´s back and feeling sleep creep over him as well. Loki doesn´t move, but he feels his smile against his shoulder.

"Next time." And he sounds so certain even though he knows nothing is that Tony knows he´s doing it for him, and he kisses his hair because otherwise he´ll say those three words he´s got no right to pronounce, and he thinks them over and over until he falls asleep.

\--

"I... I think you´ve had enough." Clint tells him, but he barely listens because the tips of his fingers are warm and buzzing, and the makeup over the bruise (it wasn´t swollen anymore this morning when he picked himself up and sent Tony for breakfast, but it was still purple and yellow and green) is starting to get itchy and his throat is dry ad he needs another beer.

"He´s fine." Ah, Natasha is a god damned angel. He loves her. He loves Clint too, actually. Almost as much as he loves Anansi, where the hell is Anansi? Ah, there he is. With another beer. This is why he loves him best.

"I love you." He lets him know when he sits the bottle on the table in front of him.

"Yeah, I love you too. Now drink your beer." He answers, passing bottles to the two other occupants of the table.

Loki takes a sip of the bitter, cool drink and then lets his head rest on the table, smiling. There´s a part of his mind, still sober, that tells him he should be ashamed of letting his friends see him in this state. The dominant, drunker part reminds the other that he´s getting married on the day after tomorrow and that shuts it up.

Besides, his friends look happy enough to talk to each other over him. They had probably been expecting a reaction a tad more violent.

"This is not fffair, you know?" He speaks up. "Well, you know, offf courssse." He adds, gesturing to Clint. "But they don´t. And that´s..."

"Unfair?" The other Omega supplies helpfully.

"Yesss. Unfffair. I can´t even get a divorce until I have a kid. I don´t want a kid from Thor." He complains to his bottle as if it´s to blame for everything. "We kisssssssed once and it was horrible. I can´t have his kid."

"Why did you even kiss Thor?" Clint frowns and he shrugs, aware that he´s treading into Too Much Info territory, but not caring in the least.

"He was being a jerk. Didn´t want me to date. That ssssshok him up."

"He´s never had a problem with you dating before." Natasha leans on the table and ignores the warning look Anansi gives her. "Why did he have it this time?"

"Becaussse he´s a jerk." It´s as good an explanation as any, right? "We weren´t even dating back then. We aren´t even dating now. And that´s unfffair too."

"Ok, babydoll, I´ll take you home now." Anansi tries to stand up, but Natasha grips his wrist and Loki giggles internally (probably externally too, he´s not very in control right now) because Anansi sits back down immediately. He´s crushing so bad it´s not even funny. Well, a little. Or a lot. Everything´s funny right now.

"Why aren´t you dating?"

He´s aware that for some reason he shouldn´t answer the question, but Clint offers him a swig of his vodka and he forgets it.

"Well, becaussse I´m getting marr... Married. And he had a boyfriend." He smiles and he hopes it´s not as goofy as it feels (it is). "We ssslept together lassst night. It wass awesssssome."

"You did what?!" Anansi and Clint exclaim at the same time, but only Anansi adds something. "Why didn´t you tell me?!"

"Becaussse it wass lasst night? I was planning on telling you. It was awesssome, ´nanssssi"

"You slept with Tony?!" Clint asks, and he´s pretty sure he should be scared shitless because they should not know it´s Tony, but he doesn´t care right now.

"Yeah, he doessssn´t have a boyfriend anymore, ssso..."

"... He broke up with Steve?"

"More like... Nah, you ssshould have been there, he was pissssed off. Look." The three of them watch intently as he wipes a napkin over the corner of his eye (it doesn´t hurt anymore, or maybe it´s just all the alcohol) to reveal a patch of purple skin.

"Fuck, did Steve do this?" Clint looks dumbfounded, he thinks, and then he laughs because that´s one hell of a funny word.

"I might or might not have sssaid sssomething about sssleping with his boyfriend. I don´t remember."

"Of course you don´t..." Natasha rolls her eyes. "Why was it so important that he called you after fucking Tony?" She asks, turning to Anansi.

"Well, he´s head over heels for Lover Boy, and they hadn´t gotten around to it."

"... Are you trying to tell me Loki Borson and Tony Stark were willingly involved in a sexless relationship?"

"I know, right?" Loki quips in, nodding. "I hadn´t had ssssex in like four months Nat! I hadn´t lasssted that long without getting laid sssince I losst my virginity!"

"Yes, we know that." Clint mutters as he pries the half empty bottle from his fingers.

"Yes. It was good. And I know about that..." He pillows his chin on his crossed arms on the table before he talks again. He only plans on blinking, but he finds himself unable to lift his eyelids again.

If he´d been awake, he´d have noticed his friends staring at his sleeping bulk with varying degrees of paleness and surprise at his last words.

"I think I love him."


	8. Take it all

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fortune and love favor the brave.

**8**

**Take it all**

Loki wakes up but he stays on his bed, with the covers pulled to his chin and a mixture of feelings he can´t quite define.

It´s curious, he thinks. He´d always thought the day of his wedding would be filled with emotions. Given that he´d managed to slip away, a dizzying sense of freedom and a little remorse for having thrown away all of his family´s efforts. Or maybe rage and desperation.

But he feels empty.

He lies there, too tired to move a finger even though he slept the whole night in those sheets that still smell of him and Tony, and he´s empty. Of course, it could be because he spent the last day projectile vomiting in his bathroom because his friends are all assholes and let him drink so much he doesn´t even remember the night clearly.

For the first time in his life, he wishes he hadn´t been born an Omega; that the world acknowledged how capable he is of fending for himself. How he's much smarter than half the Alphas he knows (and he´s known his fair share of Alphas) and...

He groans and twists in the sheets to bury his face in the pillow. Maybe he can smother himself.

There´s a small, soft hand on his shoulder all of a sudden, and he doesn´t even have to look to know who it is.

"I´m going." He mutters, and his mother chuckles a bit.

"Do you feel better today? You´re not going to puke on Thor, are you?"

"I still could, given that I get enough incentive." He turns around and she looks beautiful, even if she´s wearing just a bath robe and her hair is all messy and falling over her shoulders. The hairdresser and the make-up lady must be coming soon. He feels an odd surge of something an awful lot like sadness. He feels like he misses her.

She lies next to him and pulls the covers over them both.

"We still have a little time." She mutters and leans on his shoulder like he used to do when he still fit comfortably on her lap. Loki struggles uncharacteristically with the words in his mouth. He knows she´s the only one he´ll get them out with.

"... I´m going to miss him."

She squeezes his hand. "Is he worth it, Loki?"

Silence sets over them like a blanket heavier than the ones they hide under, and it takes him a lot but he manages.

"He is. He chose me."

She lets out a puff of breath, like she´s been hit on the stomach, and shakes her head.

"My boy... If only you´d met him sooner..."

"Now it´s too late, I know."

She stretches up to kiss his forehead.

"It´s never too late, dear. If he´s really worth it, he´ll wait for you."

"... Somehow I don´t think he´ll be willing to raise Thor´s child with me. I don´t think he´d be willing to raise even a puppy, with or without anyone else." And the mental image of a very pissed off Tony filling up milk bottles at four in the morning with blacker than black eyebags is enough to make him laugh.

"He might surprise you." She laughs along, slapping his side in mock scolding.

"Oh, I think he ran out of surprises."

"Don´t talk so soon. I once said that about a young Alpha guy that climbed his way up my roof so that we could pass each other notes without my parents noticing, and before I knew it I was raising two kids with him. People are a mystery. Especially people that love you."

\--

 _`This will do´_ Natasha thinks to herself while looking down at the half full box on her desk.

She goes to close it, but there´s a pang of guilt in her stomach that stays her hands. She lets out an angry huff and scribbles a note she thrusts in there with everything else before jamming it closed.

"At what time did you say you had your hairdressing appointment?" Clint´s voice comes from the shower.

"Eight o´clock." She mutters back absentmindedly.

"Couldn´t this idiot get married at a more reasonable hour?"

She can hear the eye rolling in his voice.

"Maybe if he had planned his own wedding he would have chosen a better starting time."

"Well, we can´t all have what we want..." Clint comes out with a towel around his waist and water still dripping off his hair and Natasha´s going to kill him because she´s going to be late for everything if she doesn´t focus. "Have you thought about..."

_About what he said._

"He was too drunk. He probably loved everyone in that bar." She shakes his head and turns to grab her purse and jacket. "I´m leaving. I´ll be back at 9 to get dressed."

"Yes, dear." He goes into the walk-in closet, and misses how she grabs the small box and stuffs it in the purse.

\--

There´s a nice Alpha lady in charge of the make-up, and a nice Beta guy in charge of the hairdressing. They´re most likely a couple, very excited about the wedding and Loki wants to strangle them both.

Luckily they´re not stupid, and as soon as they notice he´s not about to fawn over hairstyle magazines and talk about his future husband, they focus their chatting on Frigga and don´t address Loki at all except to instruct him to close his eyes or turn his head. They probably think he´s nervous, but that´s fine with him as long as they leave him alone.

However, he does raise his voice to tell them in very clear terms that the curly, cake-looking hairdo they´re discussing is not going on his head unless they kill him first.

His mother laughs heartily at this and suggests a much simpler style, to which they end up agreeing begrudgingly, musing about how few chances they have of showing off their talent.

This is why he ends being ready much earlier than her, and goes back up to his bedroom slightly dizzy with the smell of hairspray.

Three things stand out immediately. The first is the tailored white tunic and black trousers hanging off his full body mirror. The second is the window that´s not completely open, not completely closed, and definitely not how he left it. The third is the way his pillow seems to hover an inch or so over the bed.

Ignoring the tunic is almost a reflex, and he decides to check the pillow first. Underneath there´s a flat, small box that definitely wasn´t there before and that he eyes warily before opening it.

The first thing he sees when he removes the lid is a torn piece of paper with a handwriting he can recognize as easily as his own.

_`I gave Steve the picture._

_PD. The phone is an extra, you owe me one.´_

He huffs as he berates himself for not having thought it before, and then the second part gets his attention. His stomach feels heavy with excitement as he lifts the note, because it would be just like Natasha to...

The box closes with a dry thud and he slides it back under the pillow.

He remembers a particular holiday they spent at their beach house. Thor and him were eight and they had been fooling around in the pool while their parents slept on the beach chairs. Thor had thought it would be hilarious, daring him to belly flop off the trampoline. Luckily, even as a child Loki had had much better sense than that. Unluckily, he was a child, and when Thor had put his prized comic collection on the line the choice had been made. Everything´s horribly clear after that. The trampoline, the pain when he hit the water, and the way the air left his lungs and refused to come in again even after he swam his way to the surface. Thor had screamed and his father had come out of nowhere to carry him out and lie him on his side on the floor. Loki remembers how his mother´s voice was muffled and Thor´s hand was a weak pressure on his numb fingers and how his father had told him to breathe time and time again even though he couldn´t, and everything happening around him much too fast for him to follow.

Now he sits on the edge of his bed with his head spinning just like that time and tries to breathe and make sense of what´s going on simultaneously. This is how Thor finds him when he pokes his head through the door a moment after.

"Hey." He mutters, and Loki blinks a couple of times before he manages to look up.

"You´re not supposed to see me, are you?" He retorts as steadily as possible. Thor looks sheepishly from the threshold until he shakes his head. "Come in. They´re done with you?"

"Yeah. I don´t want to wrinkle the suit, though..." He mutters, and his glance drifts to the side, to the white tunic Loki has been avoiding to look at. "How are you?"

Loki takes a deep breath that miraculously tastes of peace and answers.

"Pretty fine. Considering everything."

They stay in silence for a minute, and when Thor speaks again it´s sad and slow, and he looks at everywhere but him.

"I always thought..." He stutters. "I had hoped you had something up your sleeve, you know?"

Loki takes his hand and squeezes in a way he hopes is comforting. Thor deserves it.

"I´m sorry."

"Me too." Thor answers so quickly he knows that´s what he´s been aiming for the whole time. "For everything."

He shrugs.

"Is Steve mad at you?"

"I don´t think so. But he´s not coming anyways."

"I guess he isn´t, either."

"I´m sorry.

"Don´t be."

Just like that, everything´s forgotten.

In the end, they´ll always be brothers, after all.

\--

"Be quick, I´m getting my nails done." Natasha speaks after her manicurist helpfully lodges the phone between her shoulder and her ear.

 _`What for?´_ Loki´s voice is dry and hushed.

"Do I need a motive now? Have you put on the tunic yet? Send me a picture, it might be the last time I see you in one, and it´s really pretty."

_`Is this a joke?´_

"Careful with what you ask for, dear."

_`I didn´t ask for this. What am I supposed to do with... It´s just not going to happen, and you know it.´_

"I don´t know a thing. And neither do you. Not until you test it."

_`Why did you slip Steve the picture?´_

Natasha huffs. She´s asked herself this question before.

"He deserved as much of a chance as you did." She shrugs even though Loki can´t see her and the manicurist gives her a resentful glare when she messes up the careful line she´d been drawing on her little finger´s nail. "I just... Evened the field for everyone."

_`You got me a black eye, that´s what you did.´_

"Are you saying you didn´t deserve it?"

 _`I...´_ Loki´s voice trips and stops and she narrows her eyes. _`I´m saying I´m scared.´_

Her eyebrows raise nearly up to her hairline because knowing Loki must be freaking out and actually hearing him admit it are two totally different things. And it warms her heart a little, that he didn´t call Clint, that he didn´t call Anansi.

It would be so easy for her to reassure him, to promise him how everything will work out just the way he wants it to... But she´d be lying and he´d know it. So she says the only thing she truly knows for sure.

"I would be too." And then another. "You´ll be fine." One way or the other, he will.

_`Thank you.´_

\--

The couch is heavy in both weight and memories, but he manages to move it. It looks so small out on the street, next to the cage and the framed painting and the cardboard box that´s overflowing with clothes and mugs and ties and even a small coffemaker he never bought or used for himself.

Steve climbs back up to his apartment and it looks as empty as he feels.

The mice are in a much smaller cage, and there´s a small briefcase by the bedroom door. The golden watch around his wrist weights much more than the couch now that it´s the only thing left, and he cradles it to his chest, running his thumb over the smooth metal in absentminded thoughtfulness.

Someday (soon, hopefully) he´ll get rid of it too.

At least for now, he needs it to check how much time he´s got left until he´s got to get his bus.

\--

Thor feels the slight sting of his mother´s slap on his wrist when she catches him picking at his tie for the umpteenth time.

"Sorry." He mutters sullenly, and she rolls her eyes and settles for holding his hand. There are still twenty minutes or so until five, and there´s only a handful of people already inside, but his father and Loki are still late.

"I didn´t know you had picked this church... It´s not our usual one." He comment. It´s certainly beautiful, with its white bell towers and the golden studded oak doors and he can hear the chorus practicing inside. He might even have liked it, given he wasn´t here in his current situation.

"We figured this one would be better for the press. And since you weren´t about to offer any suggestion, it was as good as any other place." She shrugs. "Is something wrong with it?"

There is, and Thor can just imagine how pale Loki´s face is in his father´s car as it appears at the end of the street.

"He lives just around the block."

"Oh." His mother answers, after what feels like an eternity, and suddenly the sleek black car is there and the doors are opening and Thor knows he shouldn´t be looking at his future husband but no one really cares anymore.

"Please." Loki is saying. Thor just _knows_ what argument started as soon as Loki recognized where they were headed. "Just five minutes."

"You´ll be late."

"I won´t. I promise."

"Just... Since when do you have a boyfriend?" His father grumbles, and looks at his mother. "Did you know about this?"

"I did." She says. He _knew it_. "Let him go."

His father seems exhausted when he rubs a hand across his face.

"I don´t want this to be any harder on you than it will already be, son." He tries, but Loki clings to his shoulders and stares straight into his eyes.

"Just let me say goodbye." He says, and his voice is heavy and hurried and if Thor didn´t know better, he´d think he´s about to break down begging. "Please."

His father sighs, and Loki throws himself at him when he nods once slowly, as if it had taken him all his strength.

"I´ll be back in ten minutes at most." Thor flinches under the weight of Loki´s stare, but just a moment after he´s turning and springing down the street with the tunic´s sides flapping behind him. He´ll remember that sight for a long time.

He disappears around the corner soon enough, and he decides to follow his parents into the church. He feels slightly dizzy, but he figures it´s a common symptom in grooms-to-be.

He hopes Loki will have enough sense not to come back looking like he just had the quick fuck he´s definitively going to have.

\--

Tony doesn´t look up when the door to the workshop opens because Jarvis is the only one that comes here when he´s working and Jarvis doesn´t care that he doesn´t look at him as long as he listens to what he´s saying.

"What is it, Jarv?"

"You have a visitor, sir."

"Can´t it wait? I´m working on cyber-you,"

Jarvis clears his throat and then Tony does look up.

"It certainly doesn´t seem like it can wait, sir." He comments before he turns on his heels and walks away, leaving the door wide open. Tony sighs in annoyance and gets up to close it, but when he´s close enough to grasp the door´s edge he´s also close enough to see what´s just outside and he can literally hear his brain sizzling as it melts.

Loki´s standing there, with his hair pushed back and braided here and there, and his skin looks so smooth it just _can´t_ be natural, and he´s wearing something that´s unarguably a wedding tunic that´s surprisingly form fitting, just like everything else he´s ever seen him wear and he looks (and he had promised himself he´d never be in a situation in which he had to or even could use this word to refer to someone wearing a wedding gown, but as always previous rules and/or promises just don´t aply to Loki) absolutely _beautiful._

"I..." That´s as far as he gets, because he shouldn´t have to look for an excuse to not go and cheer as they marry the man he loves to someone else. "You look amazing." He concludes, because at least that´s true and he can say it without risking to ruin everything even further.

Loki stays there in silence for a second, then he takes a step forward and opening his arms is almost a reflex for Tony. Loki´s much too tall to hide in his chest, but he burrows his forehead in Tony´s hair and squeezes him so hard it hurts. Tony hugs him back with the same amount of strength and he can hear Loki´s heart, beating like crazy (it almost feels like it will burst through) and that´s the telltale sign of how freaked out he is. He can´t help it then, because suddenly it rains on him that he´ll never get another chance to tell him.

"I love you." He whispers against the soft white silk of the tunic, and it feels as though the heart underneath stops for a second. "I love you." He repeats.

There´s a brief second during which he fears Loki might not have anything to say, but the arms around him grow even tighter and it takes him another second to understand Loki _is_ answering, mouthing the words against his forehead before sealing them with a kiss.

His breathing grows heavier and for a second Tony´s heart skips a beat because it looks like he´ll break down crying and he´s totally _not_ ready for a crying Loki, but suddenly he´s laughing, and there are wrinkles around his eyes and in his forehead, and Tony cherishes the sight because it´s so rare.

"What is it?" He asks with a tentative smile.

Loki reaches into his tunic and Tony thinks he´s probably got a gun down there and he´s about to leave this world in a horrible simile to Romeo. Except his Juliet is a desperate, half-crazy Omega, of course. But what he pulls out is not a gun (Or a knife. Or actual poison. Tony wouldn´t put it past him to be that dramatic) but a simple flat, small box he hands to him.

"Can I?" He asks, a hand already on the lid.

"We haven´t got all day so I suggest you do."

The box opens and there´s a torn notebook page with Natasha´s handwriting confessing to having single handedly destroyed his plans for a pacific breakup. And something about a phone he doesn´t understand, he´ll ask later.

He arches an eyebrow at Loki, and pulls the note off the box at his encouraging gesture. His eyes widen on their own when he finds a credit card and not just two but three passports.

"Fuck." Is all he can say as he checks the documents and apparently Loki is Aksel Borgh and also Egor Falk and the credit card belongs to his second name. He opens the third passport and his own face stares up at him under the name of Mark Harris and _fuck_

His mind freezes as the enormity of what Loki is asking of him is made obvious. 

When he looks up there´s a pair of green eyes waiting to meet his own and, as the silence stretches, they lose the gleam of excitement they initially had. 

"... Listen, I... I´m not asking you to-" 

"Yes you are." Tony interrupts him. "Of course you are." He repeats, and throws himself against Loki to pull him down into a soul sucking kiss because this gorgeous idiot that has never spent more than a month dating someone wants to... "Jarvis!" He exclaims after he breaks the kiss. 

Loki is still too shocked to process anything, but Jarvis´ head appears at the door again. 

"Sir?" 

He hands him Egor´s credit card. 

"Would you mind doing a transference for me?" He asks, smiling like an idiot and not ashamed of it in the least. 

Jarvis stares down at the card and he thinks there might be some sadness in those eyes that used to twinkle in badly concealed amusement when he read him stories as a child, but it´s gone in an instant, and he´s looking back up with a small, calm smile. 

"Nothing would make me happier, sir." He leaves. 

"... I will pay you back." Loki says as soon as they´re alone again and obviously _that´s_ what he´s worried about. 

"Of course you will. We´re settling in the biggest city we can find and if you´re not a regular in a play by the end of the year I´ll kick you out." He jokes and a part of his mind whispers in amazement at how easily he´s taken to this, how _right_ it feels. "You got your stuff?" He asks. 

Loki shakes his head. "I put together a small bag, but I couldn´t get anything out of the house with my dad watching. We can stop on our way to the airport, I threw it out my window and it should be somewhere between the bushes." He smiles and Tony wants to kiss it until his lips remember the exact curvature of it. 

"Wait here, I´ll be right back." 

_\--_

If asked later, Loki will vehemently deny it, but as soon as he hears Tony´s steps on the main stairs, he lets out the biggest breath he´s ever held. 

It worked. 

It worked, they´re leaving. He´s leaving with him. 

He wants to panic because it´s much _too soon_ to move in with someone, especially with someone like Tony, but he just can´t and if that means he´s ridiculously in love then so be it. 

He pulls out his cell phone, and plans his next move. 

A text to Natasha. _`We´re leaving.´_ He will call her when they settle down and she´s explained things to Clint. 

The call tone rings in his ear and it feels like eternity, but Anansi picks up at the fourth ring. 

_`Hey baby doll. I'm on my way, what is it?´_

"I wanted to know if there´s any major city you´d like to recommend." 

Anansi laughs through the line and Loki smiles because of course his friend had known all along he´d slip his way out of this one, even when he had doubted it himself. 

_`I don´t know, man. How much money have you got?´_

"I think we have enough for a good start-" 

_`Wait.´_ he hears a muffled honking and he assumes Anansi just drove over the shoulder without a moment´s notice. _`We? You got lover boy to go with you?!´_

His smile widens and god he´s got to stop that. "It was... Quite easy, actuall-" 

_`No, no!´_ Anansi sounds positively offended. _`You can´t just elope with him like that! I DIDN´T EVEN GET TO GIVE HIM THE SHOVEL TALK!´_

"Well, do it over the phone because as soon as they find out I´m not coming we won´t have any time to waste." He says after an eyeroll. "I´ll call you soon, ok?" 

_`You better.´_

They hang up. There are, of course, a lot of things they could have said. But then again things never need to be said between them. 

He has to take a breath before the next call, but he thinks of his brother and that´s enough of an incentive. 

"Hello." He greets, cautiously neutral. 

_`Why are you calling me?´_ The voice at the other end is hostile, but he´d been expecting that. 

"Listen... I´m going to give you an address, and you have to be there, ok?" The voice makes no sound, and Loki takes it as a signal to go on, so he mutters the address to the church as fast and clearly as he can. 

_`I read the papers, you know? This is tasteless, even for you.´_

This he had expected as well. 

"Hey, don´t do it for me. Do it for him. He needs you there. I know you don´t really trust me and I know I have it coming, but I´m just calling you because I´m worried about him." 

_`You should be. You´re his future husband.´_

He sighs. True, he´d been prepared for the verbal jabs and the open hostility, but he hasn´t got enough time to deal with it right now. 

"Please, just... For him. Please." He repeats, letting his voice fall as low as it can without actually begging (he´d beg too, if he had the time, because this is about his brother and it will get done even if it gets him killed) and when the other person sighs heavily he wants to thrust his fist in the air in celebration. 

"And... One more thing." 

This time the voice emits a huff of irritated inquiry. 

_`Tell me. ´_

He does. 

\-- 

He hates the suit.

Of course, he´s always had a general dislike of long sleeves and a particular one of _tight_ long sleeves, so it´s of little wonder. He fidgets uncomfortably against Nat (her slippery blue dress had been enough of a distraction at first, but now that the fabric has warmed up it just makes everything worse) on the bench, and only stops after a well aimed pinch to his ribs.

"It´s too hot in here." He complains because the church is _packed_ and the scent of burning incense and candle smoke just contributes to it.

"It could be worse."

"How so?"

"You could be Thor." She nods to their friend and Clint has to agree with her on that one.

As the heir to a wealthy family, Thor has to be used to formal wear, but he manages to look even more annoyed than Clint, picking at his cufflinks, trying not to look at anyone and looking much too lonely because Steve should be at his side but he isn´t.

"Shouldn´t he be walking down right now?" He asks dryly, even when he knows the answer because it´s nearly six o´clock and he can perfectly hear Frigga and Odin´s frantic whispering at the entrance.

"Oh, he should." Thor seems to hear her, and turns to them with a questioning stare. At his side, he sees Nat´s lips curving into a sharp smile and when she gives a small nod, Thor´s face slowly brightens and _what the hell is happening?!_

"Where is he?" He whispers in her ear, not wanting to draw any attention.

"On his way to the airport, I hope." Nat´s smile turns playful.

"You didn´t..." He mutters, running his eyes over her face, but he finds no trace that indicates this is an elaborate joke. "... Oh god, you _did_. Why didn´t you tell me?!"

"I didn´t even tell _him_ until this morning, and I don´t hear him complaining. Or Thor, by that matter."

He grumbles even as he notices the blond in question is moving towards them and _someone´s_ sleeping in the couch tonight. How the hell had she come to the conclusion that it´d be better if he didn´t know about it?! Well... Of course there´s the fact that no one could´ve guessed it because no one knew anything and that it must have been burning her, not being able to tell him for all these months, but she´s still sleeping on the goddamned couch. Or he is, if she refuses to leave the bed, he´s flexible and he´d made sure the couch was as comfortable as the bed for this very reason.

"But he didn´t tell me..." Thor´s voice interrupts his sulking, and he looks up to find him looking at Nat and speaking through the biggest, most confused smile he´s ever seen him wear.

"He didn´t know. He asked for the passport months ago, but he never expected I´d actually get them." Nat smirks like a pleased cat.

"Did he really go see Tony? Or was it just an excuse?"

Nat shrugs.

"I got two passports for your brother, but there were three in the box I gave him."

"Ah..." Thor´s face is a mixture of resignation and relief. "I´m glad Steve is leaving, then."

"... He´s leaving?" Clint asks. Gossip usually spreads like fire in their little group, but he hadn´t heard about that before.

"He called me yesterday. His bus leaves tonight, apparently. He´s going back to Brooklyn, Bucky´s going to let him stay with him until he can afford his own place." His eyes drift to the side, and then return to them. "I think you should better leave now." He states simply.

Clint follows the direction his eyes had taken and has a sudden surge of glee when he sees Anansi gesticulating frantically with Loki´s parents.

"Yeah, I think so too." He mutters through an amused smile. After all, unlike Anansi, they _do_ know something. He sees a flash coming from somewhere amongst the confessionary, so he guesses the reporters must have found their way in. Which also gives them a perfect cover. They get to their feet and Nat rests a hand on Thor´s bicep.

"He´ll call you. And if he doesn´t, I can find him, so don´t worry."

"... You´re amazing, did you know that?"

Nat smiles again, softer this time, and follows Clint when he gestures at the small door at the back of the church.

\--

Thor watches his friends depart and, when the door closes behind Clint, he sits on the stairs leading to the altar.

The memory of the last time he saw his brother is replaying in his mind, and he barely pays any attention when more flashes and microphones come out of nowhere and their guests hurry either away from the reporters, not willing to be seen in such a sad occasion, or towards them, eager to give their testimony and their spicy opinions on Odin Borson´s rebellious younger son. He smiles at that, Loki will probably read the paper tomorrow with Tony and they´ll laugh their asses off with those.

There´s a dull ache in his stomach at that, a sense of foreboding, perhaps.

Is this thing with Tony really going to work, or did Loki just throw away his safest bet on a whim?

But when he tries to be angry, to be afraid, all he can think of is how Tony hadn´t know anything either an hour ago and now he's on a plane to somewhere and all it took was Loki going to see him with a questionably obtained document, with a chance of a future, and he´d left behind his mansion and his friends and Jarvis, so maybe they´ll be ok.

"Where´s your brother?" His father´s voice shakes him from his conclusions and he looks up. His face is red and his voice shaky but even under all the anger he can see the very clear outline of worry.

"He´s fine. Happy, I guess. Does it matter where?" He mutters and his mother appears from somewhere behind him and places a hand on his shoulder. "They left together." He adds to no one in particular.

"Yes, Anansi told us as much." Her voice is soft and the slightest bit amused. "I did tell him he´d be surprised."

"Is everyone going to ignore the fact that Loki just wasted thousands of dollars along with his chance to get a share of the company?" His father interjects, but he sounds less angry and more tired. "What´s he going to do? Live in a duplex with this boyfriend of his and do other people´s laundry for a living?"

Thor laughs hard and earnest at that and he decides it´s been enough lying.

"Dad, his boyfriend is Howard Stark´s son." He says, and his father´s eyes widen in surprise.

"Your friend Tony?"

"That one. So forgive me, but they´ll probably end up in a ridiculously expensive penthouse with people doing their laundry for them."

"... But why didn´t he tell me? I could have arranged something!" He looks both surprised and betrayed, and Thor finds it hilarious.

"Because your sweet, defenseless Omega son decided he wanted to tap that and that `that´ having a boyfriend was _not_ going to stop him. No one was supposed to know so obviously everyone found out in the end."

"But you knew from the start."

"And I was this close to breaking it up, but if you try closing the door for Loki he will get out through the window."

For a second it looks like his father will insist. That he calls his brother, that he calls Tony, that they race their way to the airport, that they do _something._

Then he sighs, and his mother takes hold of his hand.

"Stay here and... Look sad or something." He instructs before pulling his wife along to deal with the thick of the reporting mass.

He stays where he is, hunched and leaning his elbows on his knees. The reporters don´t approach him, and neither do the guests. He´s glad, he doesn´t know how to deal with them, how to fake he feels like he should.

Suddenly there´s a pair of battered combat boots in his field of vision, and he tries to ignore them, hoping the person will go away. He counts two whole minutes of stubborn silence in which the boots refuse to leave and he refuses to acknowledge them, and he rolls his eyes.

He plasters on his best pissed off expression (maybe it´ll pass as a `my fiancé just stood me up, I´m not in the mood for you´ face), but as his eyes rake over a pair of long legs he knows a little too well it just slips off his face.

 _´It can´t be`_ His mind reasons, because he hasn´t seen her in six years and none of his friends had mentioned her at the party.

It can´t be, but Sif is standing right before him, looking down at him with her Sif-brand smirky smile.

"You look handsome" She says, and she looks gorgeous in her worn down jeans and combat boots and with her beautiful black hair tied into a ponytail, but all he can say is:

"How did you know?"

She shrugs.

"It was in the papers."

"B... But how..."

"Oh, you mean the juicy part?" She gestures to the emptying church, and her smile takes that devilish hue it used to get right before she climbed atop him. "I got a mysterious phone call."

And it´s all Thor can do to laugh because his brother is a magnificent jerk but he´ll hug him so hard he´ll fear for his ribs when he sees him again.

He gets to his feet and looks at her in the eye, asking for permission before wrapping his arms around her. It feels like coming home.

She´s grown, and so has he, but it feels the same. her hair against his cheek (she loves it long, and of course as soon as Loki had found out he´d made it his personal goal to stick three chewing gums in it) and her muscled shoulders, and her skin with her faint scent of leather and perfume and, when he lets go of her and holds her hands, the light scarring and the callouses.

It´s her who leans up to kiss him, and the photographers must be going crazy right now, but he can´t bring himself to care because everything´s the same but it´s all different now, because it´s been six years but her lips are still soft and she still tangles her right hand in the locks at his nape and they´re free.

Sif kisses him again, this time on the cheek, and smiles.

"He asked me to pass you a message."

"Go on"

"He told me to tell you he loves you."

"I knew that." Thor smiles and leans down to join his forehead with hers, chuckling. I love you."

She doesn´t say a thing but she lets him pull her down to sit next to him and leans on his chest and hugs him back and that says just as much.

\--

The mice cage is covered with a light blanket, so that they don´t bother anyone (it´s a miracle they let him get them into the bus in the first place) and they seem to be sleeping.

He wishes he could be as calm, but he feels like he´s shaking as much as the bus under him.

Bucky had assured him he was welcome in his apartment for as long as he needed it, but the golden watch still gleams on his wrist and he can´t shake the feeling that he´s being a nuisance.

Through the window, he can see a signal marking the city border, and he feels as if he´s leaving something behind.

He sighs and clings harder to his pets. He´ll call Thor as soon as he gets there. Apologize again. Invite him to visit as soon as he gets a place. Maybe he can even convince him to be his flatmate once he gets enough money. Bucky had said he´d get him a job. Carrying things and earning little, but still...

Before he notices, a small smile has crept up his face, and the feeling of loss has diminished.

\--

"I like it here."

"Everyone likes it here. To be honest, we could hardly have been any more stereotypic."

"Hey, you bought the tickets, I just got on the plane."

"That doesn´t mean you had to like it from the get go."

"Ok then, I don´t like it."

"Of course you like it, we´re staying here." Is the last thing Loki says before walking towards a magazine stand to buy a newspaper.

Tony smiles, amused, and even though he just know he´ll hate apartment hunting with a passion, he can´t help but to be a little excited.

All around them, Manhattan doesn´t stop, not even for these two runaways, and he finds it oddly comforting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last "real" chapter of this story, there will be an epilogue and we´re done!  
> By the way, in case anyone´s interested, I´m taking prompts for my drabble collection, it´s called "Bigger Battles" and I´ll take any ship or brotp or whatever.


	9. If it hadn´t been for love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.

**9**

**If it hadn´t been for love**

It´s been less than a week before they have their first major fight, and Tony promises himself to never, _ever_ leave a wet towel on the bathroom floor again.

The make-up sex is awesome.

-

Jarvis comes visiting after just one month, and he looks proud and confident in him and Tony hugs him like he hadn´t done since he was nine.

-

After two months they let Thor visit, and he comes with his fianceé, a woman that´s so undeniably an Alpha that Tony laughs when Loki later tells him she´s a Beta, at least until he smirks and warns him to keep acting like he doesn´t know and well, there must be a reason for that so he still treats her as any other Alpha.

-

Three months and Loki´s started making connections, working as a gaffer or just an extra in small productions. He´s still working on Jarvis, and he built a cup sized robot body for him so he _can_ tap dance now, thank you very much Loki.

-

During their fourth month there, they ´re taking a stroll one afternoon when they see a flyer announcing an art gallery promoting the work of several new artists, and they decide to give it a shot.

There´s some interesting stuff, and Loki´s negotiating a price with one of the artists when Tony spots him. He feels as though the ground is shaking under him and he clings to Loki´s arm for balance.

Steve´s standing next to one particular painting he´d seen him sketch a thousand times before. Tony wants to look away, but he doesn´t get to, not before Steve feels the weight of his stare and looks straight back at him. They stand there, looking at each other with Loki looking purposefully away.

Steve raises a hand to greet him from his spot. He´s not wearing the watch.

Tony waves as well, and they leave.

Loki doesn´t let go of his hand in the whole way home.

-

At six months Loki tells him he _might_ be pregnant.

He says nothing, but he closes the front door behind him and he spends the night in the hallway with Rhodey´s voice telling him through the phone how much of an _idiot_ he is.

When he walks in again the next morning and he tries to enter their bedroom he´s received with a glare that could have vaporized him in the spot, so he just says it.

"I´m not ready." It hurts to say it, but it´s true. "It´s too much."

Loki turns his back to him and he leaves again.

The way to his destination is filled with the buzzing of his cell phone, filled with Thor and Anansi´s messages he doesn´t read because he´s doing a pretty good job of hating himself and doesn´t need any outsourcing.

"I´m not pregnant." Is the only thing Loki says after he goes back, and he feels guilty of the wave of relief that washes over him. He waits at the threshold until the Omega deigns looking at him, and notices the giant cardboard box. "What is that?" He sounds unimpressed, even though he eyes the box with interest.

"I..." Tony sighs and places the box carefully on the floor, where it moves a little. "A baby´s too much. But we can start from the bottom, can´t we?" He takes some steps back and only then does Loki make a move to kneel in front of the box and undo the ribbon.

They name the Malamute puppy Fenrir, and he´s Tony´s favorite mistake, he realizes after two weeks, three ruined pairs of shoes and a new couch.

-

It´s been exactly a year, when Loki tells him his parents´ visit is unavoidable. He figures it´s well in time.

He buys flowers at the stand on the corner and when he looks at his reflection in the building´s elevator, fiddling with the small box and the folded sheet in his pocket, he realizes it´s been months since he settled, and the lack of fear is so sudden it ironically scares him.

Loki receives his family with smiles and kisses, like his little escapade hadn´t been all over their city´s newspapers, and he´s surprised to see they greet back just as enthusiastically, albeit with a little hint of amused resignation.

He gives Frigga the flowers, gets crushed in Thor´s hug (apparently Loki had made sure that what they called `The Fenrir equation´ wouldn´t make things difficult between them), greets Sif happily, and nervously offers a hand for Odin to shake.

It´s only after they´ve had dinner and Loki´s feeding Fen scraps off his plate (he´d remind him of how fat the dog is getting if only he hadn´t spent last night sharing his popcorn with him while watching Fast and Furious) while chatting with his father and brother, that he builds up the courage and pulls the folded piece of paper off his pocket.

"What´s that?" Sif asks, and he silently thanks she´s so loud because her question gets everyone´s attention. He unfolds the sheet and looks straight at Odin.

"This is a notarized document regarding Stark Industries´ share." He starts, and slips the paper through the table. Odin´s fingers tap down on it at the same time his eyes do. "As you can see, my father owns fifty percent of the company. When I was fifteen he gave me five percent of it, with instructions of getting more, and since last month I own a total of twenty percent." He takes a deep breath before the last part. "I am my father´s only heir, and that means when he passes away I´ll own seventy percent of Stark Industries." That hurts a bit, particularly because he knows his father won´t get to see himself with grey hair and wrinkled hands because he drinks _too much_ and he can´t do a thing about it.

"... Congratulations?" Odin arches an eyebrow with a hint of a smirk, an expression he´s seen too many times before and fuck, wasn´t Loki supposed to be adopted?

He makes an effort not to roll his eyes.

"Thank you." And then he focuses on Loki, who´s looking at him in that `what the fuck do you think you´re doing ´ fashion of his. He keeps their eyes locked as he stands off his chair and walks around the table, as he pulls at his wrists to bring him to his feet, and even as he hears Frigga´s sharp intake of breath and whoa, that´s one fast-catching woman.

"What are you doing?" Loki asks through gritted teeth, and he pleads him with a glance, hoping he´ll get the message and not interrupt him.

"I... Listen. We messed up. Big time. We ruined a lot of things, and we stepped over everyone else and made everyone lose their time, and I know I should feel guilty and you probably know it too, but I don´t, and I know you don´t, either." He _had_ had a practiced speech, but right now it´s probably dancing naked in the park, for all it helps him. "And I´ve messed up a lot since we came here, and I´ll mess up even more. Also, sometimes you´re just simply insufferable and much too rude to my omelettes." Loki rolls his eyes, but there´s a hint of a smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. "But I love you like that. Actually, I wouldn´t have it any other way, it would be weird." He takes a breath and hell, he doesn´t want to get down on one knee because he´s already the shortest person in the room as it is (the shortest _creature_ in the room, if you count Fenrir standing up on his back legs) but he does and lets go of one of Loki´s hands to reach into his pocket and pull out the box. "Will you keep making my life the best kind of hell until you get tired of me and murder me?"

It seems as if everything´s going on in slow motion, as if Loki´s eyes remain focused on his for an eternity.

"You´re an idiot." Is all he says before he pulls him up and tries to suck his soul through his mouth and Tony doesn´t even remember when `you´re an idiot´ became an expression of endearment but it does go well with the rest of their relationship.

Odin clears his throat and when they look back Sif is open mouthed and Thor looks like he´s having a seizure and Frigga´s crying and smiling.

"Is this ok?" He asks Odin, even though everyone there knows they´ve kicked Odin´s wishes in the nuts once and wouldn´t hesitate doing it again.

Odin keeps silent for a long time, but then he climbs to his feet and opens his arms and Loki goes in for a hug and everyone looks away at the same time because well... It feels like they´re intruding. It doesn´t last long, and when they break apart Odin keeps an arm on Loki´s shoulders and offers Tony a hand to shake.

They leave soon after that, with a promise to go for dinner the next day, and as soon as their footsteps stop echoing in the stairwell Loki´s on him, pulling him towards the bedroom and closing the door behind them.

-

They get married six months later. It´s small and private and Rhodey´s his best man and Anansi actually shows up with a dress because Loki dared him to be his maid of honor along with Natasha. Clint takes them both apart to pat them on the back because, as he puts it, he `never thought they´d actually have the balls to do it´ and when much later they open his present they find Loki´s horrible Grantaire pants and nearly piss themselves laughing.

Bruce takes Darcy as his date and they all cheer and he looks flustered as fuck and Darcy´s looking so damned smug it´s just hilarious. Thor spends the wedding mock sulking that Loki stole his thunder because he´d proposed to Sif much earlier and they should have waited for their fucking turn, but he´s the first to hug them after they´re formally married.

Their parents are there, Odin walks Loki down the aisle and mutters something about how at least the tunic didn´t go into the trashcan unused. Frigga tapes everything and when they get the video later Loki wonders when the hell did his mother become so good at editing. Jarvis sits on the first row and smiles encouragingly at him just before he says his vows. His own father looks much older than he should but he congratulates Loki before he pulls him apart and tells him his mother must be very proud, wherever she is. He then looks away and mutters he´s proud too. Tony hasn´t hugged his father in two decades, but he does then.

They move to a small restaurant for the reception, and Tony nearly chokes on his wine when Steve walks through the door and heads straight for them while the room falls into a silence so thick one could nearly taste it.

"Thanks for inviting me." He says, and he´s looking straight at Loki and _`What the fuck had he been thinking what´s happening?!´_. Tony wonders if he´ll have to take his brand new husband to the emergency room with a fractured nose, but all Steve does is stretch a hand that wears a simple, elegant leather band watch around its wrist.

"Thank you for coming." Loki shakes his hand and Steve smiles and shrugs before turning to Tony.

"I´m very happy for you." Tony finds smiling back is not as hard as he´d thought it´d be.

"Thank you. Make yourself comfortable." He gestures at the corner where all their friends are huddled and Steve just nods and pats his shoulder (Loki´s grip on his hand tightens a bit) and heads there.

"You invited him?" He whispers as low as he can. Loki pretends to be _really_ interested on his meat.

"He´s your friend." He says after a couple of bites. "And I trust you´re not stupid enough to trip over the same stone twice."

Tony smiles and kisses him and whispers in his ear how he´ll make sure to remind him that very night that he hadn´t been a stone he tripped over, he´d been a goddamned landslide that he´d had no way of escaping and that he wouldn´t have had it any other way.

-

Tony doesn´t know when he stops actively fighting his father´s will of him directing the company, but he does. However, when the directive board choose to start advertising Jarvis instead of another stupid machine gun he starts thinking maybe it won´t be that bad. Loki plays Grantaire again, this time in the real Les Mis thing, and the pants are horrible again and they nearly get kicked out of the theater because, as the security guard informs them, Clint´s cackles can be heard all the way down to the street.

-

They´ve been married for two years when Loki tells him he´s definitively pregnant and a puppy won´t be the solution this time.

Tony stares at the wall across him for a whole minute, and then looks up at Loki and all he can say is "Whoa."

"Yes, whoa." Loki replies with a wary look and Tony thinks back at that first time and the mind numbing fear that had settled over him, and he moves in to place a kiss on Loki´s lips and a hand on his still flat belly.

"Whoa." He repeats, this time with a smile the other reciprocates.

"Idiot." But he lets himself be pulled into the bedroom and spread over the bed and covered in kisses from head to toe.

-

Loki has to take a few months off acting when the pregnancy starts being an issue, but he´s got like a thousand audition proposals the moment he calls his agent to tell her he´s out of the hospital , so it´s not a big deal.

His father holds Hel in his trembling hands, and Tony snaps a picture as fast as he can because he can´t shake the sinking feeling that it´s one of the last chances he´ll get. Jarvis announces she has his eyes with such certainty that everyone ignores the bright green color and agrees with him. Odin offers her a finger and she wraps a tiny hand around it and Loki bursts out cackling evilly because he knows she´s got him. Frigga coos at her when she helps them bathe her for the first time, and everything feels so domestic Tony has a hard time thinking how not even three years back he would´ve laughed if he´d been mentioned the possibility of babies.

Thor is afraid of carrying her, Sif laughs and punches his arm and tells him he´s not going to break her and the look in his eyes when he finally has her in his hands is full of utter adoration. Loki rolls his eyes at that, but he´s smiling.

He´s not smiling when Anansi and Clint draw a mustache on her, but neither is Natasha and that´s enough promise of a punishment, so they leave it alone.

Rhodey takes him into the kitchen and pulls out a couple of beers and he´s thankful no one says a thing when they find them crying on each other´s shoulders a few hours later.

-

They get a wedding invitation from Steve. The last name sounds familiar, apparently he´s marrying a distant cousin of that Alpha chick he´d dated in high school

Tony couldn´t be happier for him.

-

Hel is seven and she´s showing Thrud how to throw a stick so Fenrir will fetch it back, and Tony watches over his daughter and his niece and thinks back at that cinnamon roll he gave to that hot stranger that seemed in so much of a hurry and well... He´d never stood a chance, had he?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> No but really, thanks for sticking with it to the end.
> 
> I might do a drabble collection based in this universe, for those interested. The first one will probably involve their second kid.
> 
> By the way, in case anyone´s interested, I´m taking prompts for my drabble collection, it´s called "Bigger Battles" and I´ll take any ship or brotp or whatever.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Remember to leave kudos or a comment if you have the time!


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